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Phelps-Stokes  Fellowship  Papers 


LECTURES  AND  ADDRESSES 

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NEGRO  IN  THE  SOUTH 


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Publications  of  the  University  of  Virginia 
Phelps-Stokes  Fellowship  Papers 


LECTURES  AND  ADDRESSES 

ON  THE 

NEGRO  IN  THE  SOUTH 


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Charlottesville,  Virginia 


The  Phelps-Stokes  Fellowship  for  the  Study  of  the  Negro  was 
founded  at  the  University  of  Virginia  in  1912  through  a  gift 
from  the  Trustees  of  the  Phelps-Stokes  Fund.  It  is  the  duty 
of  the  holder  of  the  Fellowship  to  stimulate  and  conduct  investi 
gation  and  to  encourage  and  guide  a  wider  general  interest  among 
students  concerning  the  character,  condition  and  possibilities  of 
the  Negroes  in  the  Southern  States. 

With  this  object  in  view  the  successive  incumbents  have  or 
ganized  classes  for  study  that  have  been  well  attended  and  dili 
gent.  Special  investigations  have  been  carried  on  by  each  Fellow ; 
related  topics  have  been  assigned  for  study  by  individuals  and 
groups,  and  the  results  presented  for  class  discussion ;  and  from 
time  to  time  men  distinguished  as  thoughtful  students  of  Negro 
Life  have  been  invited  to  lecture  at  the  University. 

This  little  volume  contains  lectures  delivered  by  invitation  of 
the  Fellow  during  the  past  three  sessions.  The  opinions  ex 
pressed  and  the  policies  suggested  are  those  of  the  respective  lec 
turers.  They  are  published,  not  to  present  the  opinions  of  the 
Fellow  nor  the  attitude  of  the  University,  but  to  preserve  con 
clusions  reached  by  independent  observers  in  different  parts  of 
the  South. 

University,  Virginia, 
October  3,  1915. 


CONTENTS. 


1.  Responsibility  of  the  Southern  White  Man  to  the  Negro.  .     5 

By  Alfred  Holt  Stone. 

2.  Considerations  on  Race  Adjustments  in  the  South 19 

By  James  H.  Dillard. 

3.  Black-Belt  Labor,   Slave  and   Free 29 

By  Ulrich  B.  Phillips. 

4.  What   Is   Justice  between   White   Man  and   Black  in  the 

Rural    South 37 

By  Clarence  Poe. 

5.  The    New    Reconstruction 56 

By  William  O.  Scroggs. 

6.  Some  Public  Health  Aspects  of  Race  Relationships  in  the 

South 70 

By  James  Bardin. 

7.  Thinking  Wrhite  about  the  Negro  in  the  South 84 

By  John  E.  White. 


8.  Negro  Criminality 

By  D.  Hiden  Ramsey. 


The    Responsibility    of    the    Southern    White    Man    to 
the    Negro.* 

BY  ALFRED  HOLT  STONE. 

In  the  world  old  history  of  the  tragedy  of  races  there  is  no 
more  interesting  chapter  than  that  which  tells  the  story  of  the 
negro  in  America.  Its  interest  is  not  alone  because  it  deals  with 
the  ever  fascinating  subject  of  the  development  of  a  primitive 
people,  taken  from  a  state  of  lowest  barbarism  and  suddenly 
transplanted  to  an  environment  possibly  some  thousands  of  years 
normally  in  advance  of  their  own.  The  interest  is  intensified  by 
reason  of  the  unique  fact  that  here  is  the  one  instance  in  history 
of  a  large  body  of  people  being  deliberately  hunted  down  in  their 
native  habitat :  transported  thousands  of  miles,  in  a  manner  which 
no  government  would  now  tolerate  in  the  case  of  cattle  intended 
for  human  consumption ;  bartered  and  handled  in  the  open  mar 
ket  much  as  any  other  species  of  livestock ;  made  to  play  one  of 
the  most  important  roles  ever  played  by  any  manual  laboring 
class  in  the  development  of  an  economic  product  of  world-wide 
significance  and  use ;  becoming  the  passive,  dully  submissive  cause 
of  the  greatest  conflict  in  our  history ;  ushered  into  citizenship  as 
the  ignorant  dupes  and  tools  of  white  politicians,  and  used  as 
dummies  in  a  travesty  which  forms  the  most  forbidding  chapter 
in  American  history ;  increasing  more  than  one  hundred  per  cent, 
in  number  during  fifty  years  of  freedom,  where  gradual  but  cer- 

*The  following  paper  is  allowed  to  stand  just  as  it  was  presented. 
It  is  a  frankly  informal  discussion,  by  a  Southern  man  before  a 
Southern  audience,  of  a  question  peculiarly  Southern  in  nature.  It 
was  not  prepared  with  a  view  to  publication,  and  it  might  be  better 
taste  to  omit  one  or  two  personal  passages,  or  at  least  to  recast  the 
form  of  expression.  But  on  second  thought  I  have  decided  to  let  it 
go  to  press  as  it  is,  rather  than  run  the  risk  of  unconsciously  alter 
ing  it  into  something  other  than  it  was  really  meant  to  be,  in  the 
process  of  rewriting  it  for  publication. 

A.    H.   S. 


O  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP   PAPERS 

tain  extinction  had  been  predicted  by  their  former  masters ;  stand 
ing  today  a  politically  and  socially  isolated  body  of  ten  millions 
of  people,  owning  some  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  of  prop 
erty,  occupying  an  economic  position  of  the  utmost  importance, 
challenging  the  serious  thought  and  consideration  of  the  nation  of 
which  they  form  an  inseparable  part,  as  a  problem  which  baffles 
solution. 

We  are  confronted  today  by  the  stubborn  fact  of  some  ten  mil 
lions  of  negroes,  who  are  increasing  rather  than  dying  out ;  who 
are  an  important  factor  in  the  economic  life  of  America,  and 
particularly  of  the  South ;  who  thus  far  have  not  proved  assim 
ilable,  either  politically  or  socially — and  who,  therefore,  consti 
tute  a  "problem."  As  Southern  men,  we  may  well  take  counsel  of 
ourselves,  as  to  our  attitude  and  responsibilities  toward  these  peo 
ple  and  toward  the  problems  created  by  their  presence. 

Toward  a  great  many  human  questions  I  may  say  that  I  am 
fatalistic,  rather  than  sentimental,  in  my  attitude.  It  is  rather 
the  practical  aspects  of  history  which  appeal  to  me.  I  see  no  di 
vine  plan  in  the  bringing  of  the  negro  race  to  America.  I  have 
the  utmost  respect  for  those  who  hold  to  such  a  belief.  But  I 
cannot  share  it.  I  think  the  case  was  simply  one  of  a  strong 
people  enslaving  a  weaker,  for  purely  selfish  but  wholly  normal 
economic  purposes.  This  view  serves  only  to  increase  the  burden 
of  responsibility  resting  upon  the  shoulders  and  the  conscience 
of  the  white  man.  I  have  heard  it  argued  that  this  contention  of 
present  white  responsibility  based  upon  the  fact  of  slavery  is  un 
sound  ;  that  the  "damages  are  too  remote."  A  knowledge  of  the 
history  of  the  origin  of  negro  slavery  in  America  suggests  that 
nothing  is  clearer  or  more  direct  than  this  responsibility.  It  is  a 
responsibility  which  embraces  every  one  of  the  great  maritime 
powers  of  Europe  in  the  fifteenth,  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen 
turies;  England,  Spain,  France,  Portugal  and  Holland.  And 
most  surely  it  rests  also  upon  America,  and  bears  most  heavily 
upon  those  of  us  who  are  closest  to  the  burden.  What  are  the 
salient  facts  of  the  case? 

The  European  slave  trade  had  its  beginnings  half  a  century 
before  the  discovery  of  the  continent  which  was  to  become  the 
home  of  the  most  important  branch  of  the  negro  race.  It  was 


THE  NEGRO  IN  THE)  SOUTH  7 

during  the  reign  of  Prince  Henry  of  Portugal,  whose  services 
to  the  cause  of  oversea  exploration  gained  for  him  the  surname 
"the  Navigator,"  that  Antonio  Goncalvez  brought  back  three 
Moors  from  one  of  his  cruises  to  the  African  coast.  These 
Moors  proposed  to  ransom  themselves  with  negro  slaves,  if  re 
turned  by  their  captors  to  their  native  country.  The  ground 
upon  which  Prince  Henry  accepted  their  proposition  is  curiously 
suggestive  of  the  antiquity  of  one  of  the  prime  arguments  by 
which  the  so-called  Christian  white  man  has  often  sought  to  jus 
tify  the  enslaving  of  the  so-called  pagan  negro.  It  was  that  this 
transaction  would  result  in  the  gaining  of  souls,  "because  the  ne 
groes  might  be  converted  to  the  faith,  which  could  not  be  man 
aged  with  the  Moors."1  Goncalvez  obtained  ten  negroes  for  his 
Moors,  and  they  landed  on  the  shores  of  Portugal  in  1442,  just 
fifty  years  before  the  voyage  of  Columbus.  That  this  was  more 
than  a  mere  curious  incident  without  bearing  on  the  real  slave 
trade  between  Africa  and  the  new  world,  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  in  1444  the  Company  of  Lagos  was  chartered,  and  that  of 
Arguin  in  1448,  each  of  which  included  in  its  activities  the  trade 
in  African  negroes.  These  companies  are  said  to  have  brought 
into  Portugal  and  Spain  seven  or  eight  hundred  negroes  a  year 
between  1444  and  1460. - 

In  the  description  of  the  landing  of  the  first  two  hundred  and 
odd  negroes  brought  to  Portugal,  in  1444,  quoted  by  Helps  from 
the  Chronicle  of  Azurara,  we  may  read  the  first  count  in  the  in 
dictment  against  modern  slavery,  destined  to  be  repeated  ten 
thousand  times  in  the  English  speaking  world  during  the  417 
years  which  elapsed  between  that  time  and  the  destruction  of 
slavery  in  the  Southern  states.  "But  now  for  the  increase  of 
their  grief,"  so  runs  the  chronicle,  "came  those  who  had  the 
charge  of  the  distribution,  and  they  began  to  put  them  apart  one 
from  the  other,  in  order  to  equalize  the  portions;  wherefore  it 
was  necessary  to  part  children  and  parents,  husbands  and  wives, 
and  brethren  from  each  other.  Neither  in  the  partition  of  friends 
and  relations  was  any  law  kept,  only  each  fell  where  the  lot  took 


1.  Oppenheim's   Helps   Spanish   Conquest  in  America,   1,   20. 

2.  Ibid.,    I.,    5    n. 


8  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP   PAPERS 

him."  We  are  further  informed  that  the  Infante  was  present 
to  look  after  the  fifth  which  fell  to  his  share,"  considering  with 
great  delight  the  salvation  of  those  souls  which  before  were  lost."  3 

As  suggesting  the  very  early  part  which  negroes  took  in  the 
economic  life  of  the  new  world,  we  may  recall  that  the  transfer 
of  negro  slavery  from  Europe  to  America  took  place  in  1501, 
only  nine  years  after  the  first  voyage  of  Columbus.  For  fifty- 
seven  years  negro  slaves  had  been  familiar  objects  in  some  of 
the  cities  of  Portugal  and  Spain.  It  is  not  surprising,  then,  to 
know  that  the  first  negroes  brought  to  America  were  not  savages 
from  the  wilds  of  Africa,  but  were  civilized,  native  born  inhab 
itants  of  Europe.4  For  quite  a  while,  in  fact,  none  but 
so-called  Christian  negroes  were  permitted  to  be  imported. 
It  was  not  until  1517  or  1518  that  a  direct  trade  was  established 
between  Africa  and  what  is  now  the  island  of  Santo  Domingo. 
This  was  under  a  monopoly  contract  granted  by  Charles  Fifth  to 
Governor  de  Bresa,  at  the  recommendation  of  Las  Casas,  which 
provided  for  four  thousand  negroes  at  eight  years.5 

The  mention  of  the  good  Las  Casas  suggests  the  curious  ad 
mixture  of  benevolence  and  selfishness  which  was  urged  in  con 
nection  with  the  definite  establishing  of  the  direct  African  traffic. 
There  is  no  questioning  the  good  priest's  sincere  desire  to  save 
the  Indians  from  the  killing  labor  of  the  mines,  which  was  rap 
idly  destroying  them,  by  substituting  a  stronger  class  of  laborers. 
There  is,  however,  no  questioning  the  fact  that  the  conviction  of 
those  on  the  ground,  that  one  negro  was  equal  to  five  Indians 
for  labor,  rather  than  any  sentimental  regard  for  the  native,  was 
at  the  bottom  of  the  first  large  importations  of  negroes, — which 
really  marked  the  beginning  of  slavery  as  an  American  economic 
institution. 

Negro  importations  to  the  Spanish  American  mainland  began 
about  1523  to  1525;  and  assumed  important  proportions  under 
licenses  granted  by  Philip  the  Second,  in  1551  and  1552,  for  the 
transporting  of  some  40,000  slaves.  Spanish  and  French  com 
panies  carried  on  the  business,  in  a  more  or  less  sporadic  fashion, 


3.  Ibid.,    L,    24-25. 

4.  Ibid,    L,    5. 

5.  Ibid,    II,    13;    III,    148. 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  9 

for  the  next  century  and  a  half ;  or,  say,  down  to  the  first  assiento 
to  England  in  1713.  English  seamen  occasionally  engaged  in  the 
slave  trade  probably  as  early  as  1553.  Sir  John  Hawkins  is 
probably  the  most  familiar  of  all  the  names  identified  with  the 
traffic.  But  it  was  not  until  about  1623-25  that  the  trade  began 
to  be  regularly  and  systematically  carried  on  in  British  vessels. 
From  that  period  down  to  1807,  when  the  lawful  business  came 
to  an  end,  the  English  became  the  greatest  slave  carriers  of  the 
world.  They  supplied  not  only  their  own  possessions  in  the 
West  Indies  and  on  the  Continent,  but  after  the  assiento  of  1713 
they  furnished  slaves  to  Spanish  America  as  well.6  The  many 
so-called  estimates  of  the  number  of  negroes  brought  to  America 
are  but  little  better  than  guesses.  From  the  very  nature  of  the 
business,  the  most  that  can  be  said  is  that  such  figures  are  merely 
suggestive  approximations.  The  number  brought  to  Spanish 
America  may  be  said  to  have  been  somewhere  between  four  and 
seven  millions.  The  guess  for  English  America,  insular  and  con 
tinental,  is  about  three  million  during  the  century  preceding  the 
Revolution.  The  number  brought  into  the  thirteen  colonies  may 
have  been  about  three  hundred  thousand.7 

In  so  far  as  abating  responsibility  is  concerned,  there  is  but 
little  force  in  the  statement,  so  often  repeated  by  Southern  writ 
ers  as  a  plea  in  justification  or  defense,  that  New  England  im 
ported  slaves,  used  them  until  she  found  it  no  longer  profitable, 
then  sold  them  to  the  South.  There  is  usually  the  accompanying 
declaration  that  the  South  herself  had  little,  if  any  part  in  the 
oversea  trade.  It  took  two  to  make  a  bargain,  and  for  every 
slave  sold  by  a  New  England  trader  to  the  South,  there  must  of 
necessity  have  been  a  Southern  purchaser.  If  the  South  was  not 
extensively  engaged  in  the  African  trade,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  she  did  a  brisk  business  in  the  interstate  traffic, — and  this 
too  for  half  a  century  after  the  other  business  was  outlawed  and 
branded  as  piracy  on  the  high  seas  by  the  entire  civilized  world. 

Lest  I  may  be  misunderstood  as  stressing  too  heavily  the  pri 
mary  responsibility  of  the  Southern  people,  permit  me  to  express 


6.  Gomer    Williams,    Liverpool    Privateers,    466. 

7.  Rhodes,  Hist,  of  U.  S.  I.,  11. 


10  PHELPS-STOKEs  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

a  most  emphatic  disclaimer, — in  so  far  as  the  idea  of  such  re 
sponsibility  being  peculiarly  Southern  is  concerned.  A  very  large 
section  of  the  white  race  is  tarred  with  the  same  brush.  If  the 
English  taunt  the  Spanish,  as  has  been  done,  with  the  saying  that 
the  Alcazar  at  Madrid  was  built  with  the  profits  of  slave-trading 
concessions,  the  Spanish  may  say  as  much  of  the  fortunes  of 
more  than  one  great  Manchester  house  whose  early  business  was 
that  of  manufacturing  goods  for  the  African  trade.  It  was  an 
English  actor  who  once  cried  out  to  a  Liverpool  audience  that 
the  very  stones  in  Liverpool's  houses  were  cemented  with  negro 
blood. 

To  revert  to  my  practical  view  of  such  things — Slavery  was  in 
truth  simply  one  of  the  great  commercial  tools  of  the  world, 
which  could  not  have  developed  if  the  world  had  not  demanded 
its  services.  Its  rise,  progress  and  decline  were  merely  part  of 
the  history  of  its  times.  Of  the  moral  aspects  of  the  English 
part  of  the  business,  we  may  say  with  Baines:  "So  totally  dif 
ferent  was  the  feeling  which  then  prevailed  on  this  subject,  that 
whilst  the  article  of  the  treaty  of  Vienna,  denouncing  the  African 
slave  trade,  was  regarded  as  the  noblest  article  of  the  great  paci 
fication  of  1815,  the  article  of  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  giving  Eng 
land  the  privilege  of  importing  negroes  into  the  Spanish  posses 
sions  in  America  as  well  as  into  her  own,  was  regarded  as  one 
of  the  greatest  triumphs  of  the  pacification  of  1713."  8  Of  the 
economic  aspect  of  the  American  branch  of  the  institution,  we 
may  safely  accept  the  opinion  of  Doyle :  "There  is  no  feature  of 
colonial  history  with  which  moral  and  sentimental  considerations 
have  so  combined  themselves  as  the  question  of  slavery.  Yet 
there  is  hardly  any  which  has  been  so  largely  determined  by  phy 
sical  causes,  so  little  by  the  deliberate  volition  of  men."  9 

But  from  the  very  inherent  nature  of  the  present  situation,  the 
South  cannot  escape  a  heavier  measure  of  responsibility  for  and 
to  the  negro  within  her  borders,  than  accrues  to  the  rest  of  this 
country  or  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  We  have  cried  "hands  off" 
for  so  long,  have  demanded  so  insistently  that  we  be  let  alone, 


8.  Williams,   Liverpool   Privateers,  470. 

9.  Doyle,    Eng.    Colsin    Am.,    243. 


THE   NEGRO  IN  THE)  SOUTH  11 

have  so  often  assured  the  world  that  we  could  handle  the  situa 
tion,  if  only  free  of  outside  interference,  that,  now  that  we  have 
been  let  alone,  we  cannot  shirk  the  responsibility  which  comes 
with  the  freedom  we  have  asked.  The  white  people  of  the  South 
ern  states  have  control,  absolute  and  undisputed,  of  the  political, 
social  and  economic  affairs  of  those  states  and  of  every  county 
in  them.  They  frame  every  law  enacted  in  the  South,  down  to 
the  ordinances  of  every  village  council,  saving  only  a  few  negro 
towns  of  unimportant  significance.  Every  sheriff,  every  mayor 
and  police  officer,  every  judge,  is  a  white  man.  Throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  land  there  is  not  one  organization,  po 
litical,  religious,  industrial  or  social,  which  is  threatening,  or 
even  seriously  questioning  this  control.  Living  under  the  laws 
which  we  frame,  interpret  and  execute,  subject  to  the  action  of 
our  officials,  amenable  to  the  processes  of  our  courts,  a  non-de 
tachable  part  of  our  industrial  economy,  sharers  of  our  economic 
destiny,  are  some  ten  millions  of  people  of  another  race.  Under 
this  bald  statement  of  fact  it  would  be  as  idle  to  deny  a  large 
measure  of  responsibility  for  the  part  which  these  people  are  to 
play  in  their  own  future  and  in  ours,  as  it  would  be  criminally 
unwise  for  us  to  fail  to  use  every  effort  to  make  that  part  what 
it  should  ibe. 

It  is  for  us  to  say  whether  we  shall  drop  the  burden,  let  the 
negro  drift  with  his  own  current,  increase  in  criminality,  grow 
in  idleness,  and  finally  develope  into  an  incubus  too  heavy  to 
carry.  To  accept  such  a  laissez  faire  program  would  be  tant 
amount  to  a  confession  of  stupidity  and  weakness  such  as  the 
white  race  has  not  yet  made.  Definitely  to  turn  away  from  it, 
involves  at  least  the  assumption  of  an  attitude  contrary  to  all 
that  the  other  course  implies, — if  not  the  formulating  and  fol 
lowing  of  a  specific  contrary  plan  of  action.  I  do  not  come  to 
you  this  evening  with  any  such  formulated  plan.  I  am  only  ven 
turing  to  suggest  the  necessity  and  wisdom  of  considering  the 
subject  in  all  its  aspects  and  ramifications,  with  a  view  to  some 
future  course  of  action.  And  unless  we  have  in  view  as  our 
ultimate  objective  the  ameliorating  of  the  general  conditions  of 
race  relationship,  the  making  possible  of  some  slight  improve 
ment  of  the  future  over  the  present,  to  be  worked  out  through 


12  PHELPS-STOKES  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

the  slow  and  tedious  processes  of  years, — why  study  the  question 
at  all?  If  our  study  leads  to  nothing  tangible,  if  we  are  to  con 
tinue  to  grope  aimlessly  in  the  fog  of  the  fancied  knowledge  which 
we  think  is  ours  by  inherited  contact,  then  we  might  as  well  leave 
the  subject  to  politicians  and  frankly  wash  our  hands  of  it.  But 
can  we  thus  easily  avoid  our  responsibility? 

No  man  is  more  keenly  alive  to  the  difficulties  involved  in  do 
ing  anything  definite  for  the  negro  masses  than  I.  I  know  his 
faults,  his  vices,  his  weaknesses,  the  inherited  and  apparently 
ineradicable  limitation  of  his  character.  I  appreciate  also  the 
difficulties  grounded  in  certain  restrictions  placed  by  the  federal 
constitution  upon  the  action  of  the  States, — restrictions  which 
make  it  impossible  frankly  to  treat  the  negro  as  a  negro.  That 
is  as  a  human  being  entitled  to  every  essential  right  of  life,  lib 
erty  and  property,  yet  at  the  same  time  as  a  race  the  mass  of 
which  is  at  least  for  the  present  normally  on  a  different  level  of 
intelligence  and  responsibility  from  that  of  the  average  white 
man  in  the  same  environment.  At  the  same  time  I  find  no  valid 
excuse  for  inaction  in  the  argument  of  inconvenience. 

First  of  all,  our  investigations  should  lay  the  stable  foundations 
of  such  constructive  effort  as  may  subsequently  prove  needful 
and  practicable.  The  very  groundwork  of  this  foundation  is  a 
better  knowledge  of  the  subject  on  the  part  of  our  own  people. 
If  I  were  asked  by  you  what  in  my  opinion  is  the  one  most  im 
portant  thing  to  be  undertaken  by  Southern  people  in  their  hand 
ling  of  the  whole  subject  of  the  negro  and  his  problems,  I  think 
I  should  answer  that  our  primary  need  was  a  more  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  Southern  negro  by  the  Southern  white  man. 
I  mean  real,  scientific  knowledge, — not  the  superficial  informa 
tion  acquired  by  contact  with  individual  negroes.  If  there  is 
any  one  branch  of  human  knowledge  of  which  the  average  South 
ern  man  claims  peculiar  and  almost  exclusive  possession,  it  is 
that  pertaining  to  the  negro.  We  regard  this  as  one  of  the  birth 
rights  of  the  Southern  child, — something  born  with  us  and  in  us, 
— and  hence  something  for  which  there  is  no  necessity  of  study. 
It  is  often  the  case  that  the  average  individual  is  least  thoroughly 
informed  upon  the  details  of  everyday  matters  which  surround 
him.  And  this  is  no  exception.  The  world  of  scholarship,  the 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  13 

standards  of  modern  research,  and  the  importance  of  the  subject 
alike  demand  something  more  at  the  hands  of  Southern  people 
than  sentimental  twaddle  about  black  mammies  and  faithful  body 
servants,  on  the  one  hand,  and  generalizing  dissertations  upon 
negro  inefficiency  and  criminality,  on  the  other. 

What  are  the  facts?  Is  the  Southern  negro  losing  ground 
economically,  or  is  he  slowly  but  steadily  increasing  his  holdings 
of  real  and  personal  property?  Is  he  doomed  to  extinction 
through  disregard  of  moral  and  hygienic  laws,  or  is  he  painfully 
learning  the  lesson  which  every  race  must  learn  that  is  destined 
to  survive  in  the  ancient  and  perpetual  struggle  of  mankind? 
Is  he  a  hopeless  menace  to  Southern  social  life,  or  is  he  a  crea 
ture  into  whom  may  be  instilled  lessons  of  law  and  order,  with 
reasonable  promise  of  a  fruition  of  better  living  and  greater  ob 
servance  of  the  usages  of  civilization?  Is  he  a  lustful  beast  that 
should  not  be  allowed  to  roam  at  will  upon  the  earth,  or  is  he 
a  fairly  moral  human  being,  furnishing  no  more  than  his  pro 
portion  of  lapses  into  the  more  revolting  social  crimes?  Is  he 
really  a  non-taxpaying  burden  upon  Southern  white  people  who 
have  generously  contributed  to  his  education,  or  does  he  pay 
his  own  way  with  his  own  taxes  and  educate  his  own  children 
at  his  own  expense? 

As  a  Southern  man,  born  and  reared  and  living  in  the  South 
ernmost  part  of  the  South,  addressing  an  audience  of  Southern 
students  who  must  inevitably  play  their  part  in  moulding  local 
and  national  public  sentiment  upon  a  subject  of  grave  public  mo 
ment,  I  put  these  questions  to  you  not  in  any  idle  or  perfunctory 
spirit.  They  are  questions  demanding  your  most  earnest  thought, 
your  candid  and  serious  study,  and  your  honest  and  unprejudiced 
reply.  I  appreciate,  probably  quite  as  fully  as  any  of  you  can, 
the  difficulties  involved  in  the  prosecution  of  investigations  such 
as  I  suggest.  But  nothing  is  easy  that  is  really  worth  while. 
Here  is  a  field  of  study  which  is  at  once  one  of  the  most  im 
portant  in  America  and  one  which  is  the  peculiar  province  of  the 
Southern  man.  Yet  what  Southern  authorities  have  we  on  any 
of  its  branches?  The  only  statistics  of  lynchings  in  the  United 
States  are  those  annually  compiled  by  a  Chicago  newspaper. 
The  only  authoritative  study  of  lynching  and  its  ramifications 


14  PHELPS-STOKES  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

is  by  Cutler,  of  Western  Reserve.  The  only  study  of  negro 
criminality  is  by  Willcox,  of  Cornell,  and  it  is  now  out  of  date. 
With  a  few  exceptions  the  only  economic  studies  of  the  Southern 
negro  have  been  by  students  from  outside  the  South.  The  best 
monographic  treatment  of  the  negro  farmer  is  by  Kelsy,  of  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania.  There  are  scores  of  topics,  sub 
sidiary  to  the  general  subject  yet  capable  of  throwing  a  great 
deal  of  light  upon  its  most  important  aspects,  which  afford  in 
viting  avenues  of  investigation  for  the  student  inclined  to  the 
general  fields  of  sociology,  economics  or  history.  The  relation 
between  property  holding  and  crime  could  be  worked  out  in  a 
study  of  the  negro  population  of  any  Southern  penitentiary.  Yet 
in  the  main  we  are  content  to  consider  the  negro  race  as  a  unit 
in  its  contribution  to  our  criminal  class,  without  any  fair  attempt 
at  discrimination  between  the  different  elements  of  its  popula 
tion.  We  are  complacent  in  the  belief  of  our  generous  carrying 
of  the  burden  of  negro  education,  yet  we  do  not  know  the  facts 
upon  which  to  base  an  intelligent  estimate  of  the  real  weight  of 
this  burden.  Only  a  few  Southern  states  provide  separate  racial 
assessments  which  will  enable  us  to  determine  the  taxes  paid  by 
each  race,  and  we  have  made  no  adequate  use  of  the  information 
made  available  by  even  these.  We  talk  of  what  the  Southern 
people  have  done  for  the  negro  defective  and  delinquent  classes. 
Yet  in  some  Southern  states  the  provision  for  such  classes  is 
pitifully  crude  and  inadequate.  Even  the  insane  among  them 
are  in  far  too  many  cases  confined  to  the  common  jails,  simply 
because  of  the  failure  of  the  state  to  provide  sufficient  accom 
modations  in  asylums.  It  is  foreign  to  my  purpose  to  indulge 
in  a  dissertation  on  different  theories  of  incidence,  but  I  venture 
to  suggest  that  in  considering  the  question  of  public  burdens  and 
public  benefits  we  give  proper  thought  to  that  which  holds  that 
the  (burden  of  taxation  falls  most  heavily  upon  the  poor, — that 
the  man  who  pays  rent  on  city  buildings  or  farm  lands  pays 
likewise  his  full  share  of  the  taxes  upon  what  he  uses  and  occu 
pies. 

We  can  make  but  little  progress  as  long  as  we  continue  to  in 
dulge  in  sweeping  generalizations.  There  are  some  ten  millions 
of  negroes  in  the  United  States,  and  they  are  not  all  alike.  There 
is  no  such  concrete  thing  as  "the  Southern  negro," — just  as  there 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  15 

is  no  such  definite  and  delimited  individual  as  "the  Southern 
white  man."  These  negroes  present  a  large  variety  of  differ 
ences  of  complexion,  native  intelligence,  education,  inherited  and 
acquired  characteristics,  temperament  and  disposition.  In  short, 
they  differ  among  themselves  in  all  those  respects  which  differ 
entiate  individuals  and  groups  of  any  and  every  other  race.  Just 
so  with  their  status,  and  with  the  relations  between  themselves 
and  the  white  race,  in  different  communities  and  places  through 
out  the  South.  It  is  unscientific,  incorrect  and  misleading  to 
speak  of  race  conditions  or  race  relations  as  though  they  were 
something  reducible  to  definite  terms  of  expression,  applicable 
alike  to  all  places  where  the  two  races  are  found  in  contact.  I 
have  heard  thoughtful  Southern  men,  who  were  not  politicians 
and  who  had  no  questionable  end  to  serve,  declare  that  in  the 
South  no  white  woman  was  safe  when  left  alone,  and  that  the 
life  of  the  women  in  the  rural  South  was  one  comparable  almost 
to  a  state  of  constant  siege.  More  than  once  I  have  protested 
against  any  such  assertion,  descriptive  as  it  is  of  a  condition 
which  would  place  our  country  upon  the  footing  of  an  African 
jungle,  peopled  by  creatures  no  better  than  savage  beasts.  When 
a  Southern  man  thus  describes  his  own  immediate  environment 
I  am  not  disposed  to  take  issue  with  him.  I  grant  that  his  knowl 
edge  of  his  own  surroundings  is  superior  to  mine.  But  I  must 
insist  that  he  do  not  generalize  for  the  South  as  a  whole.  I  live 
in  the  country.  In  my  county  there  are  about  nine  negroes  to 
one  white  person.  On  Dunleith  Plantation  there  are  some  three 
hundred  and  odd  negroes,  and  only  five  white  men.  Yet  the 
women  of  our  families  are  as  safe  from  any  form  of  molestation 
as  they  could  be  anywhere  in  the  world.  During  the  Mississippi 
river  floods  which  prevented  me  from  keeping  my  engagement  to 
come  here  last  spring,  I  had  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  of 
these  negroes  almost  in  my  very  yard  for  a  period  of  seven  weeks. 
The  only  white  persons  there  were  my  wife  and  myself,  and  on 
several  occasions  business  demands  caused  me  to  leave  her  en 
tirely  alone  with  them.  I  did  so  with  no  more  thought  of  pos 
sible  harm  befalling  her  than  would  have  come  to  me  on  leaving 
her  under  any  other  circumstances.  And  indeed  she  was  fully 
protected.  In  this  presence  I  wish  to  bear  my  testimony  to  the 
firm  belief  that  any  negro  man  there  would,  without  thought  of 


16  PHELPS-STOK£S    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

personal  consequences,  'have  risked  his  life  in  her  defense.  Par 
don  this  personal  digression.  I  indulge  it  only  to  add  emphasis 
to  my  objection  to  the  misleading  and  often  unjust  generaliza 
tions  which  are  so  frequently  made  in  this  connection. 

Of  some  things  we  may  rest  assured.  The  negro  is  here  to 
stay,  and  his  numbers  will  increase  rather  than  diminish.  In  a 
certain  large  sense,  whatever  affects  his  race  also  affects  yours 
and  mine.  From  this  there  is  no  escape.  There  is  no  method  of 
computing  the  vast  accumulation  of  economic  loss  entailed  upon 
the  South  through  long  generations  of  dependence  upon  unskilled, 
untrained  negro  labor.  In  ante-bellum  times  the  observant  trav 
eler  contrasted  conditions  which  he  saw  in  the  South  with  what  he 
saw  in  the  rest  of  the  country  and  in  Europe.  He  charged  to 
slavery  the  unfavorable  balance  against  the  South  which  every 
where  met  his  eye.  In  truth,  it  was  not  slave  labor  but  negro 
labor  which  was,  at  bottom,  responsible.  The  contrast  between 
North  and  South  was  not  the  contrast  between  free  and  slave 
labor,  but  that  between  white  and  negro  labor.  Whatever  makes 
for  greater  efficiency  on  the  part  of  Southern  negro  labor, 
whether  in  agriculture,  in  the  industrial  trades,  in  domestic 
service,  makes  for  greater  wealth  and  happiness  for  the  South 
as  a  whole.  Whatever  makes  for  cleanliness,  for  more  decent 
living,  for  better  housing  conditions,  for  .greater  freedom  from 
disease  among  our  negroes,  makes  for  health  and  peace  of  mind 
among  ourselves.  Whatever  makes  for  law  and  order  and  right 
living  among  our  negroes,  makes  for  peace  and  safety  in  the 
community  at  large. 

The  South  has  nothing  to  fear  from  the  decent,  self-respecting, 
law-abiding  negro.  In  so  far  as  I  can  see,  his  presence  is  no 
menace  to  the  white  community.  It  is  the  negro  of  the  dive  and 
the  slum,  the  conveyor  of  filth  and  disease,  the  gambler  and  the 
"bad  man/'  the  gun-carrying,  whiskey-drinking,  drug-using 
"rounder,"  whose  black  shadow  sometimes  disturbs  our  peace 
of  mind.  And  there  is  not  a  negro  dive,  a  crap  joint  or  a  "blind 
tiger"  in  any  county  in  the  South  which  does  not  exist  through 
either  the  connivance  or  indifference  of  the  white  man. 

If  it  were  possible  to  establish  a  better  basis  of  mutual  under 
standing  between  the  races,  or  between  leading  men  of  both 
races,  it  would  be  a  long  step  in  improving  general  conditions 


THE  N£GRO  IN  THE)  SOUTH  17 

and  in  softening  some  of  the  harsher  aspects  of  the  problems 
which  confront  the  respectable  negro.  It  hardly  seems  possible 
to  accomplish  much  by  mere  outside  pressure  upon  the  negro. 
You  cannot  legislate  a  people  into  either  morality  or  prosperity. 
But  a  definite  attitude  on  the  part  of  white  men  who  would  say 
to  the  proper  negroes  in  a  given  community :  "We  are  your 
friends.  Our  only  wish  is  to  help  you  help  your  people.  Our 
only  request  of  you  is  that  you  help  us  to  co-operate  with  you," 
an  attitude  which  would  be  equivalent  to  such  a  declaration, 
would  be  a  power  for  helpfulness  both  to  black  and  white. 

The  exercise  of  a  sense  of  discrimination  between  negroes  of 
different  classes  is  a  necessary  pre-requisite  to  any  effort  at 
negro  betterment.  I  have  said  that  there  are  just  as  many  dif 
ferent  kinds  of  negroes  as  there  are  of  white  people.  It  is  just 
as  discouraging  and  disheartening  to  a  respectable,  law-abiding 
negro  to  feel  that  the  white  community  regards  the  entire  negro 
element  as  one  and  the  same,  to  feel  that  he  is  held  responsible 
for  the  doings  and  character  of  the  lowest  class,  as  it  would  be 
for  a  white  man  similarly  situated. 

Protection  to  person  and  property,  by  law  and  public  opinion, 
is  another  factor  of  far-reaching  influence,  if  only  it  could  be 
thoroughly  established.  There  is  no  doubt  in  my  mind  that  this 
is  one  important  element  in  the  situation  which  makes  for  racial 
peace  and  quiet  in  the  British  West  Indies.  I  do  not  believe 
that  there  is  any  creature  so  low  in  the  human  scale  as  to  be 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  influence  which  a  feeling  of  security, 
of  fairness  and  justice  in  the  administration  of  the  law,  brings 
with  it.  The  affording  of  a  decent  environment  to  respectable 
negroes  striving  to  rear  respectable  families,  is  another  such  in 
fluence.  Beyond  question  there  is  also  room  for  reformation  in 
the  administration  of  penal  institutions,  most  of  which  are  little 
more  than  graduate  schools  for  hardened  criminals.  This  would 
mean  the  establishing  of  reform  schools  for  juvenile  offenders. 
We  might  add  to  the  foregoing  the  white  man's  support  of  and 
interest  in  every  deserving  negro  school,  industrial  or  otherwise, 
coupled  with  a  strict  supervision  of  the  teaching  force  in  every 
school  maintained  by  the  state,  and  the  broadening  of  the  whole 
field  of  the  educational  training  of  the  negro  along  well  con 
sidered  lines  rather  than  its  restriction  along  any. 

—2 


18  PHELPS-STOKKS  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

Equalling,  if  not  transcending,  any  other  opportunity  in  this 
field  of  influence  and  work,  is  that  open  to  the  Christian  minis 
try  and  the  Christian  church.  The  church  and  its  ministers  are 
privileged  to  say  and  to  do  things  which  would  be  misunderstood 
and  possibly  harmful  if  attempted  by  other  forces  or  other  men. 
I  am  aware  of  the  work  already  done  and  doing  by  the  church, 
but  there  seems  to  be  a  need  for  somehow  correlating  the  work 
of  the  church  among  negroes  more  with  the  common,  every  day 
aspects  of  their  lives.  One  function  I  have  in  mind  is  that  of 
bringing  the  races  closer  together ;  the  broadening  of  the  influence 
of  the  white  race  over  the  other;  of  making  the  negro  feel  that 
the  boasted  friendship  of  the  Southern  white  man  is  something 
definite  and  tangible,  and  not  a  mere  rhetorical  mockery  and 
sham,  meant  mainly  for  foreign  consumption.  Is  there  a  greater 
missionary  field  on  earth  for  practical  missionary  effort  than  is 
offered  Southern  churches  by  the  Southern  negro  ? 

Equal,  probably,  to  anything  else  is  the  duty  and  responsibility 
which  devolve  on  the  Southern  white  man,  by  reason  of  his  po 
sition,  his  environment,  his  inheritance  and  his  claim  to  be  the 
friend  and  mentor  of  the  negro,  to  set  the  latter  a  proper  per 
sonal  example.  The  negro  is  an  imitative  creature,  or  we  may 
say  that  his  race  is  in  its  imitative  stage.  It  is  human  nature  for 
the  negro  to  seek  justification  for  his  own  shortcomings  in  the 
conduct  of  some  member  of  the  race  which  he  is  taught  to  regard 
as  his  superior  example.  It  is  merely  a  truism  to  say  that  every 
man  owes  to  his  community  the  duty  of  an  example  of  right  liv 
ing,  of  a  clean  and  upright  life.  The  truism  becomes  freighted 
with  deeper  significance  when  applied  to  the  Southern  white  man 
whose  lot  is  cast  among  a  mixed  population. 

The  whole  matter  may  be  summed  up,  in  my  view,  as  an  ex 
pression  of  necessity  upon  the  white  man's  part  for  arresting  the 
growing  tendency  toward  cleavage  between  the  best  elements  of 
both  races,  the  lessening  of  contact  between  the  worst,  and  the 
restraining,  as  far  as  may  be,  of  the  forces  and  influences  which 
make  for  the  negro's  physical,  mental  and  moral  degeneracy. 

This  is  peculiarly  a  white  man's  problem.  And  it  is  the  South 
ern  white  man  who,  in  the  last  analysis,  is  most  vitally  concerned 
in  its  solution. 


Considerations    on    Race    Adjustments    in    the    South. 


BY  JAMES   H.  DILLARD. 


When  Mr.  Ray  Stannard  Baker  was  in  the  South  preparatory 
to  writing  his  excellent  book  entitled  "Following  the  Color  Line," 
he  asked  me  if  I  had  any  solution  for  the  race  question.  I  was 
not  at  the  time  acquainted  with  the  purpose  of  Mr.  Baker's  mis 
sion.  My  first  reply  was  that  I  knew  of  no  immediate  solution 
of  the  problem;  and  then,  correcting  myself,  I  confessed  that  I 
might  make  one  suggestion,  namely,  the  decapitation  of  the 
next  person  who  said  anything  about  it.  Mr.  Baker  did  not  ac 
cept  the  idea  of  my  suggestion,  for  which  neglect  we  are  pro 
foundly  thankful.  In  my  opinion,  his  book,  so  full  of  infor 
mation  and  keen  insight,  is  a  work  for  which  all  fair-minded 
people,  North  and  South,  owe  him  a  debt  of  gratitude.  The 
book  proves  furthermore  that  honest  investigation  and  intelligent 
discussion  may  always  be  helpful.  And  yet,  there  was  perhaps 
some  excuse  for  my  exaggerated  suggestion  of  silence.  There 
have  been  times  when,  there  have  been  phases  of  this  subject 
about  which,  such  talk  and  discussion  as  we  had  did  more  harm 
than  good.  Moreover  it  is  true  that  there  are  sores  and  bruises 
which  only  the  procession  of  days,  months,  years,  can  remedy 
and  heal.  There  are  readjustments  and  new  views  in  social  and 
economic  matters  which  only  the  revolution  of  time  can  bring 
around. 

Consider  one  very  deep  and  very  vital  feature  of  our  race 
question  in  the  South.  I  am  almost  persuaded  to  say  that  it  is 
the  heart  of  the  whole  question.  I  refer  to  the  necessary  change 
of  view  which  we  Southerners  are  called  upon  to  take.  I  hesitate 
to  make  the  statement,  lest  it  be  misunderstood,  and  yet  the  fact 
must  be  recognized.  We  must  face  the  change  from  thinking 
of  the  Negroes  as  members  of  a  slave  race  to  thinking  of  them 
as  members  of  a  race,  which  like  other  races,  may  develop  into 
higher  civilization.  Yet  there  need  be  no  surprise,  no  blame,  if 
we  of  the  South  are  slow  in  coming  to  the  realization  of  the 

19 


20  PHELPS-STOKKS  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

change.  Think  of  the  tremendous  change  from  the  love  for  the 
old  black  mammy  to  the  plain  recognition  of  the  landowning  Ne 
gro  farmer  or  the  town  Negro  grocer  and  druggist.  Is  there 
any  wonder  that  time  is  needed  to  adjust  us  to  such  change? 
The  Negro  too  needs  time  to  adjust  himself,  as  much  as  we 
whites  need  time  to  adjust  our  own  point  of  view. 

Let  me  say  at  once  that  there  is  little  trouble  in  actual  practice, 
in  the  common  every-day  routine  of  life  and  business.  Negroes 
testify  to  the  good-will  of  the  Southern  whites  in  the  enterprises 
which  they  undertake.  The  Negro  bankers  all  tell  of  the  assist 
ance  or  expression  of  approval  which  they  had  had  from  the 
local  white  bankers.  All  such  Negro  enterprises  go  on  without 
opposition  and  secure  the  good-will  of  white  people.  The  neces 
sary  cooperation  of  the  races  goes  on  in  the  main  with  friendli 
ness,  and  I  see  no  reason  why  it  should  not  continue  to  go  on, 
each  race  gradually  accommodating  itself  to  the  changed  con 
ditions.  But  the  changed  view-point,  in  regard  to  the  race  as  a 
whole,  cannot  be  adjusted  over  night. 

Meanwhile  there  should  be  an  effort  toward  having  our  dis 
cussions  such  as  are  based  on  knowledge  of  facts  and  a  desire 
for  peace  and  good-will.  For  this  reason  we  welcome  and  ap 
plaud  the  donations  of  the  Phelps-Stokes  Fund  in  establishing 
this  course  of  lectures  and  a  fellowship  in  this  University  for  the 
purpose  of  promoting  investigation  and  discussion  as  to  the  con 
ditions  of  the  Negro  population  and  the  relation  of  the  two  races. 
Let  us  also  welcome  the  University  Commission  on  Race  Ques 
tions  formed  for  the  same  purpose  and  composed  of  representa 
tives  from  eleven  of  our  Southern  State  Universities.  We  shall 
look  forward  with  deepest  interest  to  the  work  of  these  and 
similar  agencies,  such  as  the  meetings  of  the  Southern  Sociolog 
ical  Congress  and  the  work  of  college  groups  of  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association.  In  the  present  lecture  I  shall  venture  to 
deal  with  certain  general  facts  and  conditions  already  known 
perhaps  to  most  of  us. 

First  let  me  say  that  it  seems  to  me  remarkable  that  there  is 
not  more  friction  between  the  races  when  we  consider  all  that 
has  happened.  I  wonder  daily  at  the  peaceful  relations,  since 
it  really  seems  that  little  has  been  left  undone  which  might  cause 


THE  NKGRO  IN   THE)   SOUTH  21 

irritation.  Yet  the  fact  is  that  the  millions  are  going  on  quite 
peacefully  about  their  business.  It  is  only  the  dozens  and  hun 
dreds  about  whom  we  hear  trouble.  And  let  me  say  here  that  it 
is  a  pity  that  the  way  of  newspapers  happens  to  be  harmful  in 
this  respect.  When  mainly  the  evil  things  are  considered  news, 
the  result  is  misleading.  I  attended  a  large  Negro  educational 
meeting  where  white  superintendents  and  colored  teachers  spoke, 
where  there  was  important  and  interesting  business  transacted 
for  the  educational  advantage  of  the  race.  I  saw  no  mention  of 
this  meeting  in  any  newspaper,  and  yet  nearly  every  paper  I 
bought,  in  crossing  three  states,  had  some  notice  of  a  shooting- 
scrape  between  a  white  man  and  a  Negro  which  occurred  on  the 
same  day  and  in  the  same  town. 

I  am  only  wishing  to  call  attention  to  the  obvious  fact  that  in 
the  main  the  two  races  are  actually  living  and  working  peacefully 
together  in  all  our  Southern  communities.  When  three  branch 
libraries  were  recently  built  in  New  Orleans,  the  lowest  bidder 
for  one  of  them  was  a  Negro,  and  he  was  awarded  the  job  with 
out  any  question.  The  memorial  library  at  the  Louisiana  State 
University  was  erected  by  a  colored  contractor.  I  might  multiply 
such  illustrations  in  all  parts  of  the  South,  and  I  think  they  tell 
the  important  story  which  ought  to  be  emphasized  whenever  we 
think  of  the  race  problem,  because,  as  I  have  said,  we  are  in 
danger  of  forgetting  the  commonplace  when  we  hear  of  the  ex 
traordinary. 

To  my  mind  the  generally  peaceful  relations  which  exist  indi 
cate  the  settling  down  of  the  two  races  to  a  basis  of  gradual  ad 
justment,  such  a  status  as  might  have  been  begun  thirty  or  forty 
years  earlier,  but  for  the  mistaken  ideals  of  the  statesman  and  the 
selfish  ideas  of  the  politician.  Let  us  dismiss  the  politician ;  but 
a  word  should  be  said  about  the  ideals  of  the  statesman,  such 
for  example,  as  was  Charles  Sumner.  Phillips  Brooks  once  said 
that  we  cannot  live  this  life  aright  without  the  vision  of  the 
eternal  life,  and  that  we  cannot  live  for  the  eternal  life  without 
keeping  our  eyes  on  this  life.  The  same  thought  can  be  applied 
to  our  ideals ;  we  cannot  live  for  them  in  the  best  way  and  bring 
them  into  effect  without  keeping  in  view  the  plain,  homely,  actual 
facts  of  existence.  This  is  where  statesmen  like  Charles  Sumner 


22  P  HELPS- STOKES  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

missed  the  best  results  forty-odd  years  ago.  They  tried  to  legis 
late  in  a  day  their  ideals  for  two  peoples,  neither  of  which  they 
understood.  They  not  only  did  not  understand  the  people  for 
whom  they  were  legislating,  but  they  forgot  all  about  human 
nature,  and  inheritance,  and  environment,  and  all  the  other  tre 
mendous  facts  of  commonplace  life.  The  politicians  of  the  pe 
riod  had  no  vision  of  the  future;  they  wanted  immediate  results 
for  themselves;  they  neither  thought  nor  cared  about  ultimate 
harm.  The  Sumners  did  care,  and  they  meant  well,  but  they  un 
fortunately  kept  their  eyes  too  steadily  away  from  the  stubborn 
world.  So,  after  the  storm  and  stress,  out  of  which  undoubtedly 
some  good  came,  we  had  to  go  back  and  take  a  new  start.  And 
now  let  us  hope  that  self-seeking  politicians  and  all  who  are  still 
lacking  in  patience  may  not  retard  the  sure  progress,  gradual  but 
sure,  which  is  certainly  being  made  in  the  solid  way  of  race  im 
provement  and  race  adjustment. 

In  expressing  this  opinion  I  do  not  for  a  moment  imply  that 
conditions  are  satisfactory.  I  only  mean  to  say  that  they  are 
becoming  more  so,  and  that  they  are  even  more  so  at  the  present 
moment  than  one  might  expect. 

There  seem  to  me  several  immediate  causes  of  complaint  which 
should  be  mentioned.  But  before  mentioning  these  I  wish  to  say 
in  all  fairness  that  they  art  not  confined  exclusively  to  the  South, 
and  I  wish  (to  emphasize  what  seems  to  me  a  fact  of  prime  im 
portance,  namely,  that  in  opportunities  to  work  the  Negro  has 
perhaps  a  freer  field  in  the  South  than  he  has  elsewhere.  The 
same  Negro  who  built  the  University  library  of  which  I  have 
spoken  was  not  allowed  to  work  at  his  (trade  in  Chicago.  This 
statement  is  from  his  own  lips.  It  cannot  be  said  too  often  that 
the  Southern  people  do  not  stand  in  ithe  way  of  the  Negroes' 
opportunity  to  work  and  by  work  to  improve  their  economic 
condition.  But  there  are  other  things  in  life  besides  work.  Man 
does  not  live  by  work  alone  and,  as  I  have  said,  I  think  there 
are  several  immediate  causes  of  complaint  which  should  be  con 
sidered. 

Any  one  who  has  had  the  opportunity  of  observation  knows 
that  Negroes  have  just  ground  to  complain  of  their  treatment  in 
the  lower  courts,  and  these  lower  courts  are  naturally  the  main 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  23 

courts  for  them.  One  of  the  severest  criticisms  that  can  be  made 
against  civilization  and  governments  is  that  less  care  is  taken, 
less  money  paid,  less  thought  given  to  insure  justice  among  the 
poor  than  among  the  well-to-do  and  rich.  Solemnly  we  talk 
about  the  importance  of  having  learned  and  spotless  judges  for 
higher  courts,  and  make  much  ado  about  supreme  courts  and  all 
courts  of  higher  jurisdiction;  but  for  ordinary  justices  of  the 
peace  and  for  judges  in  police  courts,  we  may  select  any  broken- 
down  politician  or  ward-heeler.  The  South  is  not  unlike  the  rest 
of  the  world  in  this ;  but  because  we  are  like  the  rest  of  the 
world,  the  Negroes  suffer;  and,  because  of  the  fact  of  race  preju 
dice  added  to  the  misfortune  of  poverty,  they  suffer  all  the  more. 

Another  just  cause  of  complaint  may  be  found  in  the  treat 
ment  which  Negroes  too  often  receive  from  the  employees  of 
public  service  corporations,  especially  from  the  employees  of 
common  carriers,  such  as  ticket  sellers  and  car  conductors.  I 
do  not  speak  of  the  accommodations,  which,  though  there  is  im 
provement,  are  not  what  they  should  be,  when  we  remember  that 
a  full  fare  is  paid;  but  I  speak  of  the  humiliating  treatment  which 
Negroes  too  often  receive  in  the  way  of  coarse  and  gruff  words 
and  manner.  I  need  not  say  that  this  evil  would  be  disapproved 
as  sincerely  by  men  of  gentlemanly  instinct  in  the  South,  as  by 
men  of  gentlemanly  instinct  in  the  North. 

A  third  just  cause  of  complaint,  especially  in  most  of  the  rural 
districts,  is  that  the  school  officials  do  not  apportion  a  proper 
amount  for  Negro  public  schools  from  the  public  funds,  and 
furthermore  that  insufficient  care  is  taken  in  the  administration 
of  even  the  amounts  appropriated.  The  Southern  states  spend 
a  large  amount  of  money  on  Negro  education,  much  of  which 
is  almost  wasted,  and  the  fact  is  that  with  many  notable  excep 
tions  many  school-boards  do  not  seem  to  care  whether  it  is  wasted 
or  not.  The  Negro  schools  in  the  country  have  hitherto  had  lit 
tle  or  no  supervision.  In  a  large  proportion  of  the  rural  dis 
tricts  the  teachers  have  been  too  poorly  paid,  and  the  terms  have 
been  too  short  to  make  the  school  little  more  than  a  farce.  But 
these  conditions  are  beginning  to  change.  We  are  beginning  to 
see  that  from  every  consideration  of  justice,  as  well  as  from 
every  consideration  of  economics  and  self-interest,  the  masses 


24  PHELPS-STOKES  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

of  the  Negroes  in  the  country  must  be  brought  out  of  the  condi 
tion  of  ignorant  inefficiency.  I  think  furthermore,  as  I  shall 
say  later  on,  that  the  disposition  to  improve  the  public  schools 
for  Negroes  will  advance  with  the  advancing  idea  of  a  revolu 
tion  in  the  character  of  the  schools.  When  it  is  seen  that  the 
schools  can  be  made  a  part  of  practical  life,  that  they  can  teach 
home  industries,  and  habits  of  cleanliness  and  promptness  and 
thrift  there  will  be  more  disposition  to  spend  money  in  their  be 
half.  Let  me  say  that  there  are  many  hopeful  signs  of  the 
coming  changes. 

A  fourth  just  cause  of  complaint  refers  to  the  subtle  matter 
of  which  I  hesitatingly  spoke  at  the  beginning.  It  is  our  gen 
eralization  of  the  Negroes  as  merely — I  hardly  know  how  to 
express  it — merely  a  mass.  We  Southerners  generally  like  the 
individual  Negro,  will  work  with  him,  help  him,  joke  with  him. 
But  in  another  mood  we  class  all  of  them  together  as  a  mass.  I 
have  heard  a  distinguished  Southern  lawyer  speak  contemptuously 
of  the  idea  of  having  Negro  lawyers,  and  yet,  at  another  time, 
speak  in  terms  of  praise  of  a  particular  Negro  lawyer  with  whom 
he  had  actually  been  associated  in  a  criminal  case.  This  is  an 
interesting  fact,  and  there  are  many  similar  instances. 

A  main  feature  in  any  discussion  of  the  race  problem  must  be, 
are  the  Negroes  improving?  Is  the  race  advancing  in  education, 
in  civilization,  in  enlightenment,  in  moral  and  economic  stand 
ards?  I  think  there  may  be  the  same  reply  to  these  questions 
that  would  be  made  if  the  questions  were  asked  concerning  other 
races.  The  fact  is  that  there  has  been  a  notable  advance  within 
the  Negro  race  during  the  past  forty  years.  No  one  can  travel 
through  the  South,  and  fail  to  see  this,  unless  he  keeps  his  eyes 
solely  on  a  certain  type  of  still-existing  plantation  Negro  or 
upon  the  low  type  of  the  city  alleys.  No  one  could  stand  before 
a  meeting  of  the  Negro  Business  League  and  fail  to  see  the  ad 
vancement  there  represented.  There  are  signs  of  progress  in 
nearly  all  parts  of  the  -South :  increasing  ownership  of  land,  the 
churches  and  other  buildings  for  Negro  activities  in  the  cities, 
better-looking  homes,  large  amounts  contributed  by  the  Negroes 
themselves  for  their  religious  and  their  educational  institutions, 
growth  of  the  number  engaged  successfully  in  business  and  in  the 


THE   N^GRO  IN   THE)   SOUTH  25 

professions,  increasing  sanctity  of  the  marriage  relation,  the 
growing  sentiment  of  race  consciousness  and  race  pride,  the 
higher  and  more  dignified  tone  of  the  Negro  press.  All  of  these 
are  signs  which  may  be  seen,  and  the  facts,  so  far  as  they  can 
be  enumerated,  are  told  in  the  census  reports. 

But  there  is  the  other  side.  There  are  thousands  of  Negroes 
living  in  a  condition  of  ignorance  and  poverty  which  is  a  dis 
grace  to  so-called  civilization — just  as  certain  streets  of  New 
York  are  a  disgrace,  and  certain  streets  of  old  York  are  a  dis 
grace.  I  mention  old  York,  because  some  who  are  here  this 
evening  may  recall  Mr.  Rountree's  striking  work  on  "Poverty," 
based  upon  his  studies  in  that  city.  His  book  led  me  a  few  years 
ago  to  see  the  worst  conditions  in  that  ancient  town,  and  within 
a  few  months  thereafter  I  traveled  through  the  black  belt  of 
three  of  our  Southern  States.  I  saw  masses  of  Negroes  in  coun 
ties  where  they  number  five  and  even  more  to  one  of  the  whites. 
I  saw  their  wretched  poverty  and  the  little  that  is  being  done  for 
them,  the  little  that  in  some  places  they  are  even  trying  to  do  for 
themselves,  so  little  is  there  to  arouse  any  sentiment  of  thrift  or 
improvement.  It  must  be  said,  however,  that  there  are  not  very 
many  localities  in  which  the  Negroes  are  not  trying,  though  it 
may  be  in  a  crude  and  blind  way,  to  do  something  for  church  or 
school.  They  are  not  in  many  places  so  utterly  hopeless  as  per 
haps  thirty  percent  of  the  people  in  York.  They  have  more  air 
and  sun,  and  certainly  a  sunnier  disposition.  But  they  need  and 
deserve,  like  all  the  poor,  a  better  chance,  and  if  we  are  wise  we 
shall  help  them  to  have  a  better  chance.  Who  can  say  that  it  will 
be  to  the  advantage  of  the  white  race  to  have  the  Negroes  in  any 
community  thriftless  and  ignorant? 

About  four-fifths  of  the  Negroes  are  still  living  in  the  coun 
try  districts,  and  there  at  present  the  chief  problem  lies.  The 
betterment  of  the  condition  of  the  country  Negro  is  the  great 
immediate  problem,  not  only  for  the  sake  of  the  individual 
Negro,  but  for  the  sake  of  the  Negro  problem  as  a  whole.  For 
unless  the  rural  conditions  are  improved,  the  most  enterprising 
of  the  country  Negroes  will  flock  more  and  more  into  the  cities, 
leaving  behind  the  more  hopeless  of  their  fellows,  and  creating 
a  more  difficult  situation  in  the  cities.  If  the  improvement  of 


26  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

rural  life  is  generally  recognized  as  perhaps  the  greatest  of  pres 
ent  social  problems,  it  is  not  hard  to  see  that  the  problem  is  most 
acute  in  the  rural  districts  of  the  South. 

In  the  South,  as  everywhere,  the  heart  of  the  problem  of  rural 
improvement  is  the  land  question.  Where  the  Negroes  have  been 
able  to  acquire  land,  there  the  best  conditions  exist.  In  some 
counties  conditions  are  such  that  very  few  Negroes  have  been 
able  to  acquire  land.  I  drove  twelve  miles  in  Alabama  and  was 
informed  that  I  had  passed  through  but  three  men's  land,  all 
three  of  whom  lived  in  cities.  In  a  majority  of  counties  how 
ever  the  conditions  are  different,  and  many  Negroes  have  bought 
the  land  on  which  they  live  and  work. 

But  the  land  question,  under  our  present  laws,  must  take  care 
of  itself.  What  can  be  done  otherwise  for  the  rural  Negroes? 
I  mention  two  things,  referring  to  their  religion  and  to  their 
education.  Far  the  most  important  and  potent  influence  is  the 
country  preacher.  From  him  the  masses  receive  their  ideals  of 
duty  and  conduct,  of  life  and  death.  From  him  come  all  their 
ideas  above  and  beyond  the  routine  of  daily  life  in  the  field  and 
cabin.  Through  him,  more  than  in  any  other  way,  the  masses  of 
the  Negroes  can  be  influenced  for  better  living.  If  I  were  a 
millionaire  I  would  have  a  traveling  commission  of  competent 
preachers,  some  white  and.  some  colored.  I  would  have  them  at 
tend  every  Baptist  Association,  every  Methodist  Conference, 
every  meeting  of  preachers  of  whatever  kind.  I  would  have 
them  go  through  the  country  and  call  together  meetings  of 
preachers.  I  would  have  them  hold  summer  schools  for  preach 
ers.  And  the  burden  of  their  message  should  be  this :  that  sal 
vation  is  now  as  well  as  hereafter  and  that  clean,  honest,  indus 
trial  living  is  a  vital  part  of  religion.  Furthermore  I  would  place 
in  every  institution  for  the  preparation  of  preachers  a  teacher  of 
sanitation  and  home-making.  In  other  words  I  would  bring 
home  to  the  minds  of  the  preachers  the  conviction  that  their 
religion  is  meant  for  this  world  as  well  as  for  the  next  world. 

The  next  great  question  is  of  course  that  of  schools.  Here  the 
most  important  feature  of  the  situation  at  this  time  is  the  im 
provement  of  the  rural  schools,  and  the  main  need  is  a  larger 
appropriation  from  the  public  funds  for  this  purpose.  The  edu- 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE)   SOUTH  27 

cation  of  the  masses  of  the  Negroes  can  be  affected  only  through 
the  regular  public  school  system,  which  is  the  only  method  for 
the  general  education  of  any  people.  In  regard  to  the  elementary 
public  school,  especially  those  in  the  country,  there  is  a  wide 
spread  opinion  that  they  are  ineffective,  that  they  need  almost  a 
revolution  in  their  curriculum.  The  movement  for  introducing 
into  them  home  industries,  for  making  them  fitter  in  the  way  of 
touching  the  life  about  them,  and,  at  the  same  time,  for  putting 
more  life  into  the  teaching,  has  been  generally  welcomed.  Here 
is  a  tremendous  field  for  further  philanthropy  and  outside  as 
sistance.  And  if  the  schools  become  thus  changed  and  improved, 
if  their  education  can  be  seen  to  be  effective,  then  without  doubt 
there  will  be  more  disposition  to  appropriate  money  in  their  be 
half. 

Try  to  picture  any  one  of  a  hundred  counties  with  their  large 
Negro  population,  mostly  ignorant  and  living  from  hand  to 
mouth,  with  little  or  no  thought  of  cleanliness  or  thrift,  and  with 
children  swarming  about  the  one  or  two  room  cabin.  There  may 
be  in  the  community  a  so-called  school,  open  during  three  or 
three  and  a  half  months,  at  some  time  in  the  year,  with  a  gener 
ally  incompetent,  poorly  paid  teacher,  teaching  in  a  rude  church 
or  a  ruder  shanty  of  some  kind,  teaching  by  rote  some  lifeless 
and  remote  facts,  out  of  lifeless  books.  Better  than  nothing  this 
is,  but  how  little.  And  with  only  a  little  more  money  and  a  lit 
tle  more  intelligence  how  much  better  it  might  be.  It  is  one  of 
the  pities  of  the  situation  that  by  not  spending  more  on  rural 
education,  for  whites  as  well  as  blacks,  we  are  almost  wasting 
much  that  we  do  spend.  This  is  the  fact  which  we  of  the  South 
will  realize  more  and  more,  as  we  come  to  realize  the  bottom 
fact,  that  it  will  not  pay,  not  pay  in  any  sense  of  the  word,  to 
allow  any  portion  of  our  population  to  remain  uneducated. 

I  have  mentioned  the  three  sure  processes  for  immediate  bet 
terment,  namely,  the  acquirement  of  decent  homes,  the  enlighten 
ment  of  the  preachers  as  to  practical  religion,  and  the  improve 
ment  of  the  schools.  Whether  or  not  these  three  things  will 
solve  the  whole  problem,  grant  that  there  will  always  persist  a 
race  problem,  yet  these  things  are  good  in  themselves.  No  one 
can  deny  that  it  is  well  for  the  man  who  tills  the  soil  to  hold  the 


28  PHELPS-STOKES  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

soil.  No  one  can  deny  that  a  religion  which  brings  home  the 
realization  of  human  obligations  is  good  for  any  human  being. 
No  one  can  deny  that  an  education  which  brings  intelligence  in 
the  performance  of  daily  tasks  and  daily  living  is  good,  not  only 
for  the  individual,  but  for  all  who  must  come  in  contact  with  him. 
So  I  repeat  that  in  these  three  lines  of  progress  we  must  place 
hope  and  confidence. 

I  said  a  moment  ago,  "granted  that  there  will  always  persist  a 
race  problem."  Who  can  doubt  that  there  will  be  a  race  problem, 
if  we  choose  to  call  it  so,  so  long  as  human  beings  of  different 
races  inhabit  the  earth?  We  have  no  monopoly  of  the  problem 
in  the  South.  It  may  be  said  to  be  world-wide.  Races  are  dif 
ferent,  and  the  differences,  so  far  as  we  know,  will  persist.  In 
our  Southern  states  we  have  to  face  the  differences  and  the 
difficulties.  But  what  other  solution  is  there  than  to  acknowl 
edge  differences,  and  yet  to  work  in  all  necessary  co-operation 
and  to  cultivate  good  will?  Neither  the  idea  of  wholesale  col 
onization,  nor  the  idea,  of  wholesale  extinction,  any  longer  re 
ceives  serious  second  thought.  Are  not  all  such  speculations  and 
predictions  quite  futile?  Must  we  not  realize  the  fact  that  the 
Negro  is  here  to  stay,  and  mainly  in  the  South? 

None  of  us  can  read  the  future,  and  I  never  think  of  the 
prophecies  about  the  race  problem  without  the  inclination  to 
quote  the  lines  in  Henry  IV : 

"You  are  too  shallow,   Hastings,  far  too   shallow, 
To  sound  the  bottom  of  the  aftertimes." 

But  in  the  meanwhile  there  is  enough  at  hand  to  engage  our  at 
tention  for  a  time.  The  old  English  proverb,  echoed  by  Chau 
cer  in  his  Good  Counsel,  said,  Do  the  next  thing;  and  for  us, 
whatever  the  future  may  hold  in  it  of  uncertainty  or  perplexity, 
the  nearest  duty  lies  in  the  direction  of  good-will,  cooperation,  and 
practical  helpfulness.  Our  immediate  problems  are  better  homes, 
a  fuller  conception  of  religion,  and  a  more  efficient  system  of 
education. 


Black-Belt    Labor,    Slave    and    Free. 


BY  ULRICH   B.  PHILLIPS. 

The  so-called  negro  race  in  America  has  widely  varied  quali 
ties.  Many  quadroons  and  mulattoes  and  some  exceptional 
negroes  possess  mental  traits  identical  with  those  characteristic 
of  white  men;  they  follow  the  same  habits  of  thought  and  ac 
tion  and  respond  in  the  same  way  to  economic  and  social  stimuli. 
But  the  great  mass  of  ordinary  negroes  are  in  a  radically  differ 
ent  category,  thinking  and  acting  in  distinctly  negro-like  ways 
and  thereby  presenting  peculiar  problems  of  economic  and  social 
adjustment.  The  negroes  who  dwell  in  the  Southern  districts 
of  negro  majorities — the  black  belts — usually  show  the  fullest 
negro  traits ;  and  the  blacker  the  belt,  other  things  equal,  the 
more  thoroughly  negro-like  is  the  general  run  of  the  negroes.  In 
the  present  discussion  we  shall  not  be  concerned  with  exceptional 
conditions.  We  shall  consider  the  mass  where  the  mass  is  the 
greatest  and  the  type  the  most  undiluted.  The  cotton  belt  will 
afford  our  chief  data,  for  the  double  reason  that  that  industry 
has  long  employed  the  greatest  bulk  of  negroes  and  that  for  it 
the  census  returns  are  more  illuminating  than  for  any  other  in 
the  premises. 

In  the  ante-bellum  regime  slavery  afforded  the  means  of  polic 
ing  the  negroes  and  transferring  their  control  from  hand  to  hand 
in  the  labor  market.  With  it  was  intimately  associated  the 
plantation  system,  providing  a  definite  routine  of  simple  tasks 
and  supervision  to  ensure  their  performance.  It  also  provided 
incidentally  a  certain  degree  of  industrial  and  social  education 
for  the  negroes.  The  regime  of  plantation  slavery  in  fact  per 
mitted  capable  managers  to  make  typical  American  negroes  as 
efficient  laborers,  doubtless,  as  the  world  has  ever  seen  under  any 
form  of  coercion.  In  both  social  and  industrial  schooling  planta 
tion  slavery  was  immensely  effective.  Some  masters  and  over 
seers,  it  is  true,  were  too  degraded  and  brutal  to  give  the  slaves 
under  them  a  chance  for  sound  progress  through  imitation.  On 

29 


30  PHELPS-STOKKS  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

the  other  hand  some  masters  were  too  easy-going  to  drill  their 
slaves  in  efficient  labor.  Indeed  the  slaves  had  many  leverages, 
and  oftentimes  they  ruled  their  masters  more  than  the  masters 
ruled  them.  But  generally  speaking  the  slaves  in  the  ante-bellum 
South  were  far  more  productive  as  well  as  more  civilized  than 
any  other  mass  of  negroes  had  become  at  that  time.  Further 
more,  slavery  and  the  slave-trade  made  the  labor  supply  phe 
nomenally  responsive  to  industrial  opportunity.  Its  mobility  is 
demonstrated  by  the  slave-labor  occupation  of  virtually  the  whole 
of  the  cotton  (belt's  vast  area  within  forty  years  from  the  time 
when  the  cotton  industry  began  to  be  firmly  established.  Since 
emancipation,  on  the  other  hand,  the  negro  population  has  al 
most  wholly  staid  in  the  districts  where  the  slave-holding  regime 
left  it. 

Tradition  in  various  localities  of  the  South  relates  almost  in 
credible  tales  of  cotton  output  'by  the  slaves  of  vigorous  planters. 
Authentic  records  of  individual  achievements  are  lacking;  but 
the  census  returns  are  eloquent  enough.  To  use  these  in  a  com 
parison  between  ante-bellum  and  present-day  conditions  it  is 
necessary  to  choose  districts  where  negroes  have  continually  done 
the  bulk  of  the  work :  where  towns,  which  always  disturb  the 
statistical  picture  of  agriculture,  are  few  and  small ;  and  where 
there  have  occurred  no  revolutionary  changes  in  the  methods 
of  cultivation,  such  as  have  been  caused  by  the  enormous  resort 
to  commercial  fertilizers  in  the  piedmont  and  the  pine-barrens, 
and  in  the  western  cotton  belt  by  the  invasion  of  the  Mexican 
boll-weevil.  Probably  the  area  most  truly  typical  of  those  where 
uo  change  has  occurred  of  importance  comparable  to  the  freeing 
of  the  slaves  is  the  Yazoo  Delta  in  Northwestern  Mississippi. 
Let  us  take  four  counties  strung  along  the  Mississippi  river  in 
this  district,  none  of  them  containing  towns  of  consequence,  all 
of  them  blessed  with  the  inexhausible  fertility  of  alluvium,  and 
all  producing  before  and  since  the  war  little  but  cotton  and  corn 
in  a  quite  steady  ratio.  The  four  counties,  Tunica,  Coahoma, 
Bolivar,  and  Issaquena,  had  in  1860  a  population  of  4,384  whites, 
25,592  slaves  and  no  free  negroes;  a  total  of  29,976  of  whom 
85.4%  were  blacks  and  14.6%  whites.  In  1910  these  counties 
contained  12,243  whites  and  90,001  negroes;  a  total  of  102,244, 


THE  N£GRO  IN  TH£  SOUTH  31 


with  a  black  percentage  of  88.  Now  in  1860  the  cotton  product 
of  the  four  counties  was  100,972  bales  averaging  four  hundred 
pounds  each,  while  in  1910,  a  typical  year  of  the  recent  period, 
it  was  156,384  bales  of  five  hundred  pounds  average.  Convert 
ing  the  figures  for  1860  into  five-hundred-pound  bales,  and  re 
ducing  the  output  to  a  per-capita  basis  for  the  gross  population, 
it  appears  that  for  each  inhabitant  these  counties  produced  two 
and  one-third  bales  in  1860  as  compared  with  one  and  a  half 
bales  in  1910.  In  short,  the  per-capita  product  has  declined  by 
thirty-five  per  cent.  A  large  number  of  other  counties  chosen 
at  random  throughout  the  rest  of  the  cotton  belt  confirm  these 
indications  of  the  Yazoo  Delta  that  the  emancipation  of  the 
rural  black-belt  negroes  has  diminished  their  industrial  efficiency. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  areas  of  white  majorities  in  the  cotton 
belt,  in  all  cases  where  no  great  diversion  of  labor  has  occurred 
as  into  the  cotton  mills,  show  a  heavy  increase  in  cotton  produc 
tion.  The  per-capita  crop  has  generally  doubled  or  trebled,  and 
in  many  districts  it  has  increased  ten  fold.  In  recent  decades,  in 
deed,  the  most  striking  development  has  been  in  certain  large 
districts  of  Texas,  Oklahoma,  and  western  Texas,  where  the 
population  is  about  nine-tenths  white  and  where  the  cotton  crop 
often  runs  to  two  bales  per-capita  in  spite  of  considerable  activi 
ties  in  other  industries.  Texas  alone,  with  less  than  one-sixth  of 
her  population  negroes,  and  containing  less  than  one-tenth  of  the 
Southern  negro  population,  now  produces  more  cotton  than  all 
the  South  did  in  1860,  and  from  one-third  to  nearly  half  as  much 
as  all  the  other  cotton  states  produce  today.  In  short  the  negroes 
have  apparently  lost  to  the  whites  the  larger  half  of  the  cotton 
growing  industry,  without  any  considerable  gain  in  any  other 
field  to  offset  the  loss  ;  and  the  average  cotton-field  negro  is  only 
two-thirds  as  efficient  as  his  grandfather  was  at  his  own  age  as 
a  slave. 

Various  other  data  tend  to  confirm  these  conclusions.  To  take 
extreme  cases  :  in  the  year  1906  the  state  of  Alabama  leased  a 
large  number  of  able-bodied  convicts  at  the  rate  of  forty-five  dol 
lars  per  month.  At  the  same  time  in  the  South  Carolina  low 
lands  the  current  rate  of  hire  for  plough  hands  was  four  dollars 
a  month,  together  with  a  cabin,  an  acre  or  two  of  land,  and  "Sat- 


32  PHELPS-STOKES  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

nrdays  off  with  the  mule ;"  and  the  lessees  of  the  Alabama  con 
victs  probably  made  a  larger  profit  per  head  from  the  work  of 
their  laborers  than  did  the  South  Carolina  planters  from  the 
labor  of  their  free  negroes.  This  comparison  commits  the  fal 
lacy,  perhaps,  of  proving  too  much.  But  standing  baldly  as  it 
does,  it  points  the  moral  of  modern  free-negro  inefficiency.  It 
suggests  that  the  mass  of  average  black-belt  negroes  has  not 
been  reached,  and  it  is  by  no  means  sure  to  be  reached  for  bene 
ficial  effect,  by  the  existing  agencies  for  education  and  stimulus. 

In  the  slaveholding  industry  no  money  wages  were  paid,  and 
in  present  day  Southern  agriculture  most  of  the  laborers  work 
on  some  basis  of  tenantry  or  crop-sharing.  To  determine  the 
cost  of  labor  year  by  year  under  either  regime  would  be  too  in 
tricate  a  task  for  the  present  occasion.  But  a  comparison  of 
conditions  and  tendencies  will  serve  our  purpose. 

The  cost  of  a  slave's  labor  arose  partly  from  his  being  a  living 
creature  requiring  sustenance,  and  partly  from  his  being  a  "chat 
tel"  the  ownership  of  which  involved  the  investment  of  capital. 
As  a  human  being  he  (and  all  his  group)  had  to  be  provided 
constantly  with  sufficient  food,  clothing  and  shelter  to  preserve 
his  life,  health  and  strength,  and,  in  some  degree  at  least,  his 
happiness  and  loyalty.  He  must  also  be  given  medical  attention 
in  time  of  need,  and  perhaps  some  occasional  reward  as  an  in 
centive.  All  this  was  required  for  the  sake  of  the  master's  pros 
perity,  if  from  no  other  consideration.  On  the  other  hand  the 
work  must  be  neither  debilitating  in  character  nor  exhausting  in 
quantity.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  cotton  cultivation  all  of  the 
routine  work  was  and  is  relatively  light  by  reason  of  the  very 
nature  of  the  industry.  After  the  land  has  been  prepared  for 
the  crop  the  heaviest  task  in  the  field  is  the  mere  trudging  behind 
a  one-horse  plough ;  and  the  hours  of  day-light  in  Southern  lati 
tudes  are  never  long  enough  for  this  to  exhaust  the  strength  of 
an  able-bodied  man.  For  the  cotton  belt,  and  still  more  for  the 
tobacco  districts,  the  tales  told  by  the  abolitionists  that  slaves 
were  systematically  worked  to  death  for  the  greater  profit  of 
their  masters  were  obviously  the  purest  fabrications.  And  even 
in  the  rice  and  sugar  industries  it  is  impossible  to  see  how  masters 
could  profitably  follow  such  a  practice  in  the  latter  ante-bellum  pe 
riod,  in  view  of  the  prices  for  slaves  which  then  prevailed. 


THE   NEGRO  IN  THE}   SOUTH  33 

As  a  chattel  the  slave  had  to  earn  the  interest  on  his  invest 
ment  before  he  could  earn  any  profit  for  his  owner.  And  still 
other  deductions  must  be  made  if  we  apply  sound  principles  of 
accounting.  The  value  of  the  chattel  was  liable  to  impairment  or 
destruction  by  death,  disease,  accident,  or  escape.  To  distribute 
this  liability  over  a  term  of  years  it  would  be  necessary  to  esti 
mate  the  rate  of  risk  and  add  to  each  year's  expenses  appropriate 
sums  for  casualty  insurance,  as  well  as  the  taxes  levied  on  slave 
property.  Depreciation,  however,  shoud  probably  not  be  reck 
oned,  for  the  advancing  years  and  declining  capital  value  of  the 
adult  slaves,  along  with  the  deaths  of  the  aged,  were  offset  under 
ordinary  circumstances  by  the  birth  and  growth  of  children. 

In  the  cotton  growing  industry  the  cost  of  labor  constituted  by 
far  the  greatest  part  of  the  total  cost  of  production,  and  prior  to 
the  civil  war  nothing  of  much  importance  occurred  after  the  in 
dustry  had  reached  its  routine  basis,  say  in  1820,  to  increase  the 
efficiency  of  labor.  Under  such  conditions  an  essential  require 
ment  for  permanent  prosperity  was  that  the  cost  of  labor  should 
bear  a  fairly  steady  relation  to  the  value  of  the  product.  As  to 
slave  sustenance  this  requirement  was  easily  met,  for  the  aver 
age  plantation  raised  most  of  its  own  provisions  and  the  prices 
of  supplies  in  the  market  were  fairly  steady.  But  with  all  the 
other  elements  in  labor-cost  the  circumstances  were  quite  other 
wise,  since  they  varied  with  the  widely  fluctuating  prices  of  slaves 
in  the  market.  Let  us  consider  these  fluctuations,  taking  as  the 
standard  the  average  prices  of  "prime  field  hands"  in  the  cotton 
belt.  A  prime  field  hand,  be  it  said,  was  an  able-bodied  young 
man  of  no  special  skill.  In  1795,  just  before  the  beginning  of 
the  upland  cotton  industry,  this  price  was  a  little  below  $300. 
By  1800  the  new  demand  carried  it  to  $450,  and  the  closing  of 
the  African  slave-trade  in  1808  caused  a  further  rise  to  $600  in 
the  following  year.  Then  the  war  with  Great  Britain  reduced 
it  to  $450  again  in  1813 ;  but  the  return  of  peace,  bringing  a 
great  stimulus  to  industrial  expansion,  carried  it  to  $1,000  in 
1818.  The  overproduction  of  cotton  and  the  panic  of  1819, 
however,  depressed  it  to  $700  in  1821.  After  nearly  a  decade 
of  quite  stable  slave  prices  a  new  inflation  carried  them  to  $1,300 
for  prime  field  hands  in  1837;  'but  the  prevalence  of  exceedingly 

— 3 


34  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP   PAPERS 

hard  times  in  the  first  half  of  the  forties  drove  them  down  to 
$600  in  1844.  With  the  recovery  of  the  cotton  market  after  1845 
and  its  firmness  at  from  ten  to  twelve  cents  a  pound  throughout 
the  fifties,  there  occurred  a  vigorous  and  unremitting  rise  in 
slave  prices  until  in  1860  prime  field  hands  brought  from  $1,600 
to  $2,000  a  head  in  the  various  cotton-belt  districts. 

These  fluctuations  paralleled  those  of  cotton  prices  to  some 
degree  in  various  brief  periods ;  but  in  the  lapse  of  decades  cotton 
trended  downward  as  positively  as  slaves  trended  upward.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  century  upland  cotton  ranged  about  thirty 
cents  a  pound  in  the  New  York  market.  In  1803  it  fell  to  twenty 
cents,  and  during  the  war  of  1812  it  dipped  as  low  as  eleven 
cents.  The  arrival  of  peace  sent  it  up  sharply  to  thirty  cents, 
and  the  panic  of  1819  brought  it  down  to  fifteen,  where  it  staid 
off  and  on  until  the  early  thirties.  It  then  rose  to  fifteen  cents 
in  1835,  but  promptly  entered  upon  a  disastrous  decline  to  the 
starvation  level  of  six  cents  in  New  York,  which  meant  four  or 
five  cents  in  the  interior  cotton  districts.  In  the  later  fifties  it 
recovered,  as  we  have  already  seen,  and  ranged  for  the  rest  of 
the  ante-bellum  period  between  ten  and  twelve  cents  at  New 
York. 

Now  let  us  convert  slave  prices  into  terms  of  cotton.  In  1800, 
in  round  figures,  a  prime  field  hand  could  be  bought  for  1,500 
pounds  of  the  ginned  staple;  in  1810  the  price  had  doubled;  in 
1820  it  had  risen  to  5,000  pounds  of  cotton;  in  1830  it  was  7,000 
pounds;  in  1840,  8,000;  in  1850,  10,000;  and  in  1860  it  ranged 
between  15,000  and  18,000  in  different  parts  of  the  cotton  belt. 
Thus  the  price  of  slaves  as  measured  in  the  chief  product  of 
their  labor  increased  at  least  ten  fold  between  1800  and  1860, 
and  three  fold  after  1820. 

In  the  early  twenties  and  before,  a  planter  could  buy  slaves 
and  raise  cotton  at  a  substantial  profit  above  maintenance,  in 
terest,  and  insurance  charges.  After  1835  he  could  no  longer 
do  so.  In  1839  and  the  early  forties  thousands  of  planters  were 
bankrupted,  and  those  who  were  unscathed  esteemed  themselves 
extremely  fortunate.  In  the  fifties,  which  by  comparison  were 
spoken  of  as  prosperous,  it  was  only  the  most  talented  managers 
and  those  whose  plantations  lay  in  the  most  fertile  districts  who 


THE   NHGRO  IN  THE   SOUTH  35 

could  buy  slaves  and  from  their  labor  earn  anything  beyond 
interest  charges.  The  average  planter  seems  to  have  gained  only 
from  two  to  five  per  cent,  on  his  investment.  Slaves,  indeed, 
had  grown  too  precious  to  be  risked  in  any  but  the  most  salubri 
ous  employments.  Such  planters  as  were  near  the  seaports 
eagerly  hired  gangs  of  German  and  Irish  immigrants  for  ditch 
ing  and  levee  building  and  any  other  needful  work  too  heavy 
for  performance  without  danger  of  strain  and  injury.  No  man 
could  afford  to  take  chances  with  a  thousand-dollar  slave. 

In  the  present-day  regime  of  the  black  belts  it  is  hard  to  speak 
with  confidence  as  to  the  cost  of  labor.  But  it  is  fairly  certain 
that,  in  spite  of  the  diminished  efficiency  of  the  general  run  of 
the  negroes,  the  labor  cost  per  pound  of  cotton  is  not  so  great 
as  it  was  in  1860,  and  that  there  is  no  tendency  toward  the  un 
remitting  enhancement  of  the  labor-cost  ratio  such  as  there  was 
in  the  slaveholding  regime. 

Thinking  men  of  the  ante-bellum  South  opposed  the  over 
throw  of  slavery  partly  because  they  hoped  the  abolitionists' 
clamor  would  die  away  and  permit  the  South  to  remodel  her 
own  system  quietly  and  constructively,  partly  because  of  a  dis 
like  for  disturbing  vested  interests,  but  mainly,  it  appears,  be 
cause  they  had  an  exaggerated  dread  of  the  social  disorder  to 
follow  the  relaxation  of  control  over  the  negro  population. 
There  was  some  apprehension  that  emancipation  would  reduce 
the  efficiency  of  the  negroes,  but  little  belief  that  slave  labor 
per  se  was  more  profitable  to  the  employers  than  free  labor 
would  be. 

Slavery  was  abolished  against  the  resistance  of  the  South, 
and  in  a  way  which  was  one  of  the  most  injurious  conceivable 
for  the  employers.  But  since  the  agony  of  the  so-called  Recon 
struction  period  the  Southern  community  has  taken  a  new  start, 
and  today  it  is  taking  stock  of  the  situation  and  making  plans 
for  the  future.  The  South  needs  knowledge  of  her  own  past 
and  present  in  order  to  frame  the  most  intelligent  plans.  No  one 
anywhere  has  but  a  smattering  knowledge  and  a  haphazard  un 
derstanding  of  the  ante-bellum  regime.  There  is  room  here  for 
patriotic  service  by  vigorous  students  by  scores  and  hundreds. 
But  still  greater  is  the  need  for  men  of  constructive  leadership 


36  PHELPS-STOKES  FELLOWSHIP 

to  lay  out  programmes  and  set  sound  examples  for  the  people 
to  follow. 

Under  ordinary  circumstances  free  laborers  in  general  cannot 
secure  rewards  too  high  for  the  welfare  of  the  communities  in 
which  they  dwell.  The  higher  their  earnings,  the  greater  their 
contributions  to  the  social  fund.  One  of  the  surest  indications 
of  general  prosperity,  in  fact,  is  the  prevalence  of  high  wages, — 
and  a  greater  general  prosperity  is  one  of  the  things  which  the 
South  most  imperatively  needs.  Its  achievement  would  help 
immensely  to  solve  a  multitude  of  problems.  The  purchase 
money  for  the  slaves  brought  into  any  district  was  a  contribution 
paid  to  the  people  of  other  communities,  whose  industrial  vigor 
seems  generally  to  have  been  relaxed  by  the  receipt  of  this  trib 
ute.  But  the  wages  paid  to  free  labor  stay  largely  in  the  district 
itself,  to  swell  the  earnings  of  the  merchants  and  bankers  and 
the  professional  classes  and  to  promote  new  enterprises  for  in 
dustrial  diversification.  However  it  may  be  achieved,  therefore, 
whether  by  the  increase  of  paternalistic  supervision  or  otherwise, 
one  of  the  chief  needs  of  the  whole  South,  one  of  the  tasks  which 
whites,  blacks,  and  mulattoes  must  yet  combine  to  accomplish, 
is  the  diminution  of  irresponsibility  and  the  improvement  of 
industry  among  the  general  run  of  the  negroes. 


What    Is   Justice   between    White    Man    and    Black   in 
the    Rural    South? 


BY  CLARENCE 


I  am  to  talk  to  you  tonight  about  the  welfare  of  the  rural 
South.  I  should  not  need  to  invoke  your  interest  in  any  rural 
problem,  standing  as  I  do  in  an  institution  founded  -by  Thomas 
Jefferson,  who  constantly  reiterated  his  belief  that  the  political 
health  of  a  State  is  measured  by  the  proportion  of  its  people 
engaged  in  agriculture — Jefferson  who  declared  that  "a  prosper 
ity  built  on  the  basis  of  agriculture  is  that  which  is  most  desir 
able  to  us ;"  and  that  "our  government  will  remain  virtuous  as 
long  as  our  people  are  chiefly  agricultural."  In  an  institution 
founded  by  Jefferson,  I  repeat,  I  should  not  need  to  remind  you 
of  Goldsmith's  "111  fares  the  land ;"  of  the  great  historian  Fer- 
rero's  declaration  that  "the  disease  which  killed  the  Roman  Em 
pire  was  excessive  urbanization ;"  nor  of  Rider  Haggard's  his 
tory-supported  warning  to  our  race  that  "the  flocking  of  the  land- 
born  to  the  cities  is  the  handwriting  on  the  wall  of  our  civiliza 
tion." 

Nor  should  I  need,  standing  in  an  institution  nurtured  by  the 
love  of  your  historic  State,  to  invoke  your  interest  in  any  prob 
lem  affecting  the  future  of  the  South ;  for  your  battlefields  have 
reminded  me  afresh  of  Senator  Carmack's  eloquent  expression 
of  the  love  that  all  of  us  feel  for  our  home-land  which  "has 
broken  the  ashen  crust  and  moistened  it  with  tears,  a  land  scarred 
and  riven  with  the  plowshare  of  war  and  billowed  by  the  graves 
of  her  dead,"  but  a  land  to  which  "every  drop  of  our  blood, 
every  fiber  of  our  'being,  every  pulsation  of  our  hearts,  is  con 
secrated  forever." 

I  ask  only  that  you  young  men  shall  consider  the  facts  I  pre 
sent  with  that  ardent  and  high-minded  love  for  the  South  which 
distinguished  our  fathers,  and  with  that  high  seriousness  whidh 
made  President  Cleveland  declare  when  asked  what  was  the 
greatest  problem  confronting  the  American  people : 

37 


38  PHELPS-STOKKS  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

"Oh,  there  is  only  one.  We  can  see  our  way  through  most 
of  our  difficulties.  We  can  at  least  imagine  a  solution  of 
all  problems  but  one.  But  the  Negro  question  baffles  every 
body's  understanding.  No  one  knows  what  the  answer  is. 
No  one  knows  when  it  will  demand  an  instant  answer." 

I. 

What  then  are  the  outstanding  facts  that  face  us  as  we  consider 
the  future  of  the  South's  rural  civilization?  The  outstanding 
facts  are  these,  that  the  rural  South — and  by  the  "rural  South" 
I  mean  the  farms  themselves  and  not  the  so-called  "rural  sec 
tions"  of  the  census  which  include  all  towns  of  less  than  2,500 
people — the  real  rural  South  is  getting  blacker  instead  of  whiter. 
Sparsely  settled  though  it  is,  a  veritable  Eden  for  agricultural 
production  and  with  the  bare  fringe  of  its  possibilities  not  yet 
touched,  we  yet  face  the  fact  that  in  the  last  census  decade,  a 
decade  when  its  white  population  ought  to  have  increased  ten 
times  as  fast  as  its  negro  population,  the  white  acreage  actually 
decreased  and  the  Negro  acreage  increased ;  the  proportion  of 
white  farmers  decreased  and  the  proportion  of  Negro  farmers 
increased;  and  the  Negroes  .gained  faster  in  farm  ownership  (17 
per  cent,  as  compared  with  12  per  cent,  for  the  whites),  while — 
most  sinister  fact  of  all — it  was  the  whites  who  fastest  lost  their 
homes  and  joined  the  tenant  class  (188,000  increase  in  number 
of  white  tenant  farmers  in  the  last  decade,  or  27  per  cent., 
against  only  118,000  increase  in  Negro  tenant  farmers,  or  21 
per  cent.). 

Take  our  South  Atlantic  States,  principally  Virginia,  North 
Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  Florida.  Here  the  num 
ber  of  white  farmers  during  the  last  census  decade  increased 
only  12  iper  cent.,  negro  farmers  23  per  cent. — nearly  twice  as 
fast.  In  the  South  Central  States,  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  Missis 
sippi,  and  Alabama,  white  farmers  increased  12  per  cent,  and 
negro  farmers  21  per  cent. — nearly  twice  as  fast.  In  the  west 
South  Central  section  as  a  whole,  the  incoming  of  white  settlers 
into  Texas  and  Oklahoma  resulted  in  a  different  showing,  but 
the  figures  given  for  our  eastern  South  form  a  striking  index  to 
conditions  in  all  the  vast  region  between  the  Potomac  and  the 
Mississippi. 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  39 

Or  rather  I  should  say  that  we  shall  have  a  more  accurate 
and  more  striking  index  to  conditions  when  we  consider  the  facts 
just  given  in  their  relation  to  the  population  increases  of  each 
race.  Take  the  South  Atlantic  States.  Their  total  white  popu 
lation  increased  20  per  cent,  but  the  number  of  white  farmers 
only  12  per  cent.  On  the  other  hand,  the  total  number  of  ne 
groes  increased  only  10  per  cent,  but  the  number  of  negro  farm 
ers  23  per  cent.  In  other  words,  the  number  of  our  white  farm 
ers  increased  only  60  per  cent,  as  fast  as  our  white  population, 
whereas  negro  farmers  increased  230  per  cent,  as  fast  as  the 
negro  population. 

Similarly  in  the  East  South  Central  States  the  white  popula 
tion  increased  14  per  cent,  but  the  number  of  white  farmers  only 
12  per  cent.,  whereas  the  negroes,  with  a  6  per  cent,  increase  in 
population,  made  a  21  per  cent,  increase  in  number  of  farmers. 
In  other  words,  the  number  of  white  farmers  increased  only  86 
per  cent,  as  fast  as  the  white  population,  while  the  negro  farmers 
increased  350  per  cent,  as  fast  as  the  negro  population. 

Here  then  is  your  supreme  fact:  that  with  present  tendencies 
the  negroes  are  capturing  the  rural  South  both  from  the  stand 
point  of  occupancy  and  ownership.  It  is  just  fifty  years  this 
month  since  freedom  came.  Yet  within  this  period,  that  is  to 
say,  within  the  lifetime  of  men  not  yet  old,  the  negroes  have 
reached  the  position  where  they  occupy  half  as  good  a  position 
as  our  white  farmers  themselves  with  regard  to  ownership  of 
the  farms  they  operate — have  reached  a  position  where  they 
own  a  farm-land  area  greater  -than  the  total  area  of  Scotland 
or  Greece  and  two-thirds  the  total  area  of  England.  In  one 
state,  Oklahoma,  the  percentage  of  tenants  is  greater  for  whites 
than  for  negroes,  while  in  five  other  States — Virginia,  North 
Carolina,  Tennessee,  Arkansas,  and  Texas — the  actual  number 
of  white  tenants  is  greater  than  the  actual  number  of  negro  ten 
ants. 

II. 

These  are  the  facts,  facts  vouched  for  by  the  unimpeachable 
witness  of  the  United  States  Government,  that  confront  us. 
What  do  they  indicate,  my  friends,  except  that  under  present 
conditions  the  rural  South  is  being  lost  to  the  white  man  ?  And 


40  PHELPS-STOKKS  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

what  does  this  mean  for  the  future  of  our  race  and  our  section, 
town  as  well  as  country?  With  what  concern  should  the  South 
regard  the  swift  and  steady  deterioration  of  her  rural  citizen 
ship,  the  only  foundation  stone  upon  which  she  should  rear  her 
mighty  empire  of  tomorrow? 

But  our  problem  is,  What  can  we  do  about  it  and  yet  be  just 
to  the  Negro?  For  the  chivalrous  South,  in  my  opinion,  earn 
estly  yearns  as  I  myself  yearn  to  be  just  to  the  black  man.  I 
have  risked  unpopularity  to  defend  his  rights  in  previous  years, 
and  my  desire  now,  no  less  than  ever  before,  is  simply  to  see 
justice  done  between  the  two  races — not  a  superficial  justice  but 
a  deep  and  elemental  justice. 

Now  when  this  question,  "What  is  justice  between  white  man 
and  black?"  is  put  to  the  average  citizen  of  other  sections,  he 
answers  with  pathetic  assurance  and  finality,  "Equality."  But 
the  tragedy  of  our  case  is  that  the  answer  is  not  so  simple ;  that 
no  answer  to  so  complex  a  problem  is  ever  so  simple.  The  noble 
doctrine  of  equality  if  only  considered  superficially,  may  lead  us 
into  fatally  vicious  negation  of  its  intrinsically  righteous  princi 
ple  if  we  do  not  remember  that  great  modifying  principle  recently 
reiterated  by  Dr.  Richard  T.  Ely,  of  Wisconsin: 

"There  is  no  greater  inequality  than  the  equal  treatment  of 
unequals!' 

There  is  a  thought  that  I  wish  every  man  in  America  were 
forced  to  memorize.  Wre  cannot  put  a  man  and  a  skunk  in  the 
same  room  and  say  we  are  giving  them  equal  treatment.  Why? 
Because  their  standards  are  different.  We  cannot  turn  a  dozen 
mountain  goats  and  a  dozen  Kentucky  colts  into  the  same  dry 
winter  pasture,  and  say  we  are  giving  them  equal  treatment. 
Why?  Because  their  living  standards  are  different.  Similarly 
I  cannot  sew  a  bushel  of  wheat  and  a  bushel  of  thistle  in  my 
fields,  or  a  quart  of  jimson-weed  seed  with  a  quart  of  snap  beans 
in  my  garden,  and  leave  them  to  grow  up  together,  and  claim  to 
be  giving  them  equality  in  any  real  sense  of  the  term.  I  cannot 
put  my  boy  in  a  stable  with  my  colt  and  say  I  am  treating  them 
equally  well.  And  every  recurring  summer  teaches  us  that  tares 
will  flourish  under  conditions  fatal  to  the  wheat;  that  cockle- 
burrs  will  grow  riotously  in  a  neglected  field  in  which  every 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  41 

corn  stalk  has  yellowed  to  a  barren  death;  that  we  must  spray 
and  prune  and  nurture  the  apple,  the  peach  and  the  rose,  while 
the  thorn  and  the  thistle  seem  to  thrive  by  neglect. 

In  other  words,  my  friends,  throughout  the  animal  and  vege 
table  world  we  see  the  fundamental  truth  exemplified  that  "there 
can  be  no  greater  inequality  than  the  equal  treatment  of  unequals," 
and  the  principle  holds  just  as  good  in  our  world  of  economics 
and  sociology.  If  you  should  turn  loose  two  million  Japanese  or 
Chinese  and  two  million  white  men  on  California  farms  and  give 
them  so-called  equal  privileges,  there  would  not  be  genuine  equal 
ity  for  the  white  men.  The  Caucasian  with  his  higher  living 
standards  would  not  have  an  equal  chance  with  the  less  civilized 
Orientals.  As  Professor  Branson  puts  it: 

"A   people   with   lower   living   standards   will   always   prevail 
against  a  people  with  undefended  higher  living  standards." 

In  other  words,  wherever  two  men  are  doing  the  same  work, 
the  man  who  can  live  on  fifty  cents  a  day  will  always  crowd  to 
the  wall  the  man  whose  higher  civilization  requires  a  dollar  or 
more  to  maintain — unless  that  higher  civilization  and  living  stand 
ard  are  properly  safeguarded. 

And  so  in  the  rural  South  today,  my  friends,  we  see  another 
illustration  of  the  fact  that  genuine  equality,  genuine  justice, 
must  be  not  that  of  the  letter  which  killeth  but  of  the  spirit 
which  maketh  alive.  If  equality  for  two  living  things — whether 
plants  or  animals  or  persons  or  races — if  equality  does  not  mean 
equality  for  each  to  grow,  develop  and  perpetuate  its  own  life, 
its  own  excellences,  its  own  achievements  and  standards  built 
up  through  the  long  process  of  evolution,  if  equality  does  not 
mean  that,  then  that  equality  is  false  and  spurious,  a  snare  and 
a  delusion;  and  a  heinous  repudiation  in  fact  of  all  that  it  pro 
fesses  to  be  in  name.  And  it  is  today  just  such  a  travesty  and 
mockery  of  equality  that  hangs  like  a  blight  and  a  pall  all  over 
the  rural  South.  In  the  name  of  justice  for  the  negro  the  most 
hideous  injustice  is  done  to  the  white  man.  In  the  name  of  equal 
ity  for  the  lower  order  of  civilization  the  most  ruinous  inequality 
is  forced  upon  the  higher  order.  In  the  name  of  benevolence 
for  a  backward  race  an  economic  and  social  situation  of  un- 
imagined  malevolence  forces  the  advanced  race  away  from  the 


42  PHELPS-STOKES  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

lands  our  own  ancestors  rescued  from  the  wilderness  and  the 
savage. 

Are  the  negroes  gaining  on  the  white  farmers  in  the  South 
today,  are  they  capturing  the  rural  South  and  Africanizing  the 
fairest  portion  of  America,  because  they  are  superior  to  white 
farmers  in  intelligence?  No.  Because  they  are  superior  in  in 
dustry?  No.  Because  they  are  superior  in  character?  No. 
They  are  gaining  for  none  of  these  reasons.  They  are  gaining 
simply  because  present  conditions  give  the  negro  two  unfair 
advantages  in  competition  with  the  white  man. 

First,  an  unfair  economic  advantage  in  that  the  negroes  are 
able  to  buy  land  and  make  crops  on  a  scale  of  living,  clothing 
and  housing  that  the  respectable  white  farmer  and  his  family 
doing  the  same  character  of  work  cannot  meet. 

Second,  a  social  advantage  in  that  when  negroes  move  into  a 
white  neighborhood,  or  begin  to  outnumber  the  whites  in  a 
neighborhood,  or  become  of  bad  character,  the  whites  may  be 
forced  to  move  away  because  there  is  no  longer  an  adequate 
white  social  life,  or  for  the  peace  and  security  of  the  white  farm 
er's  wife  and  daughters. 

I  know  how  it  was  and  yet  is  in  my  old  home  neighborhood. 
My  own  father  in  his  old  age  was  forced  to  leave  his  lifelong 
home  and  the  home  of  his  father  before  him,  simply  because  the 
crowding  in  of  Negroes  around  us  made  the  place  unsatisfactory 
for  reasons  both  of  family  protection  and  of  neighborly  social 
life.  An  excellent  white  man  and  his  wife  who  were  my  tenants 
on  the  same  place  three  years  ago  left  for  the  same  reason.  A 
cousin  who  has  built  on  the  same  farm  fears  that  the  same  forces 
will  cause  him  to  move.  If  I  had  to  sell  the  place  it  would  not 
bring  half  what  it  would  bring  if  it  were  in  a  thrifty  white  neigh 
borhood.  And  only  recently  I  had  a  letter  from  one  of  the  dear 
est  old  ladies  I  have  ever  known,  a  woman  who,  left  a  widow  on 
a  small  farm,  moved  to  a  town  in  another  state.  She  wrote : 

"Many  a  man  has  died  and  left  his  wife  and  children  in  very 
good  circumstances  with  a  little  farm  and  stock  where  she 
and  her  children  could  have  stayed  and  worked  and  been 
happy.  But  for  fear  of  the  Negro  she  would  have  to  pull 
up  and  leave  it  all  and  go  to  the  factory  with  a  sad  heart 
and  put  her  darling  children  to  work  from  daybreak  till 


THE   NKGRO  IN  THE)   SOUTH  43 

dark.  The  Negro  is  free  and  the  white  child  has  often  be 
come  the  slave  through  fear  of  the  Negro.  I  myself  would 
never  have  left  my  home  but  for  this  fear." 

These  are  typical  cases.  Moreover,  where  there  is  no  actual 
physical  fear  of  the  Negroes,  their  presence  may  nevertheless 
drive  white  people  away  from  a  neighborhood  simply  because 
these  Negroes  occupy  farms  that  white  people  would  otherwise 
occupy,  and  for  this  reason  there  is  no  social  life  for  the  white 
people  who  remain,  and  schools,  churches,  and  all  the  agencies 
that  make  life  attractive  dwindle  and  starve. 

Not  only  this,  but  the  Negro  has  an  unfair  advantage  for  tak 
ing  the  rural  South  to  himself  in  that  white  farmers  not  only 
will  not  move  into  an  all-negro  neighborhood,  while  negroes  do 
not  hesitate  to  move  into  any  white  community,  but  furthermore 
it  is  an  almost  invariable  rule  that  when  he  buys  out  a  white  man, 
it  lowers  land  values,  injures  social  conditions  and  makes  it 
easier  for  negroes  to  get  more  land,  whereas  when  a  white  man 
buys  land  in  a  community,  the  rule  is  that  it  increases  land  values 
and  makes  it  harder  for  him  to  get  more. 

If  I  know  my  own  heart  I  believe  in  being  just  to  the  negro. 
I  believe  with  all  my  soul  that  "in  the  long  years  of  God  the 
strong  cannot  oppress  the  weak  without  destruction."  With  all 
possible  yearning  for  truth  I  have  joined  the  hosts  of  other 
earnest  Southerners  who  in  prayer  for  light  have  flung  them 
selves  : 

"Upon   the   great   world's   altar   stairs 
That  slope  through  darkness  up  to  God." 

And  I  repeat  that  as  God  knows  my  heart  I  believe  in  being 
just  to  the  Negro,  but  I  also  believe — and  here  is  the  thought 
that  I  fear  has  never  occured  to  thousands  and  thousands  of 
earnest,  sincere,  well-meaning  students  of  the  problem — I  also 
believe  in  being  just  to  the  laboring  white  man  whose  ancestors 
through  centuries  of  toil  and  aspiration  and  discipline  have 
wrought  out  the  civilization  which  we  enjoy — the  civilization  to 
which  the  negro,  moreover,  owes  the  very  peace,  safety  and 
prosperity  he  enjoys. 

And  I  tell  you  tonight,  my  friends,  with  all  the  earnestness  of 
my  soul,  that  present  conditions  in  the  South  are  not  just  to  the 


44  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

laboring  white  man — that  the  white  farmer  hasn't  an  equal  chance 
with  the  negro  in  the  struggle  for  future  control  of  the  rural 
South.  I  tell  you  that  while  I  know  that  here  and  there  individ 
ual  negroes  are  treated  with  injustice — hideous  injustice — yet 
considered  as  a  race  the  really  disadvantaged  and  handicapped 
man  in  the  South  today  is  not  the  negro — not  the  negro  who  but 
yesterday  in  African  barbarism,  is  now  becoming  heir  to  the  most 
advanced  civilization  in  the  most  favored  portion  of  the  whole 
earth ;  not  the  negro  who  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  the  best-off,  the 
most  advantageously  situated,  non-white  man  in  the  whole  world 
today;  and  better-off  even,  according  to  Booker  Washington's 
own  statement,  than  the  less  favored  laboring  men  of  our  own 
race  in  Europe. 

Consider  the  Chinese,  infinitely  the  negro's  superior,  with  a 
civilization,  a  literature,  a  religion,  a  government,  science,  inven 
tions,  and  a  social  order,  that  are  yet  the  admiration  of  all 
thoughtful  people;  consider  the  Hindus,  equalling  the  Chinese  in 
many  respects  and  excelling  them  in  philosophy  and  literary 
genius — and  yet  when  I  was  on  the  other  side  of  the  world  I 
found  the  Chinese  and  Hindus  working  for  ten  cents  a  day, 
whereas  the  American  negro,  whose  race  has  made  no  important 
contribution  to  civilization,  has  made  no  great  achievement  in 
science,  government  or  religion,  makes  ten  times  ten  cents  a  day 
solely  by  reason  of  contact  with  the  white  man's  own  opulent 
civilization.  And  furthermore  by  reason  not  of  his  superiority  but 
by  reason  of  his  very  inferiority,  in  the  matter  of  lower  living 
standards,  this  American  negro  is  now  able  to  outdo  the  white 
man  in  getting  possession  of  the  land,  the  fundamental  source  of 
all  wealth. 

My  point  then  is  that  the  really  handicapped  and  disadvantaged 
man  in  the  fierce  industrial  struggle  in  the  South  today  is  not 
the  negro  but  the  white  farmer  or  laborer  who  must  compete 
with  a  race  with  lower  living  standards,  and  whose  white  social 
life  throughout  the  rural  South  is  impoverished  if  not  imperiled 
by  the  almost  universal  sandwiching  of  white  and  negro  farmers. 
Are  not  these  really  the  ones  for  whom  the  concern  of  our  states 
men  and  builders  of  tomorrow,  our  lovers  of  justice,  should  go 
out — these  humbler  white  brethern  out  on  the  farms  and  in  the 


THE   NEGRO  IN  THE}  SOUTH  45 

shops  and  factories  who  are  fighting  the  hard  battles  of  our 
race  and  of  a  sorely  pressed  civilization,  yet  who  are  too  often 
dismissed  as  being  only  "poor  white  trash,"  while  benevolent 
people  overflow  with  sympathy  for  the  supposedly  downtrodden 
negro  ? 

Less  than  a  year  ago  il  heard  Rev.  Dr.  Graham  Taylor,  in 
a  sermon  at  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correc 
tions  declare  that  the  striking  miners  in  Colorado  in  attempting 
to  maintain  their  higher  living  standards,  a  higher  ideal  of  civ 
ilization  for  themselves,  their  wives,  and  little  ones,  were  bat 
tling  for  a  cause  as  holy  as  martyrs  had  died  for  in  other  ages. 
What  then,  I  ask,  about  the  living  standards  of  the  Southern 
white  farmer?  Is  it  not  just  as  high  and  holy  a  duty  to  protect 
the  white  man's  civilization,  social  heritage  and  living  standards 
that  our  ancestors  have  wrought  out  through  patient  generations, 
as  it  is  to  protect  the  negro  in  the  rights  to  which  his  individual 
and  racial  achievement  entitle  him? 

But  here  the  question  arises,  What  can  we  do  about  it?  What 
can  be  done  and  what  is  in  prospect  to  be  done  to  remedy  the  in 
equality  and  injustice  that  now  handicap  the  white  man  in  the 
rural  South  in  his  efforts  to  perpetuate  and  develop  a  richer 
rural  civilization? 

My  own  answer  is  that  I  believe  the  immediate  need  is  for 
the  steady  development  of  homogenous  white  communities  in 
the  South  instead  of  the  present  indiscriminate  sandwiching  of 
white  and  negro  farms;  and  that  we  should  begin  with  race 
segregation  in  land-ownership  as  the  first  step  in  this  direction. 
And  while  I  have  argued  for  this  as  a  matter  of  justice  to  the 
white  man,  I  believe  it  will  be  best  for  both  races.  For  after 
all  has  been  said  about  economic  conditions,  the  fact  remains 
that  the  most  crying  need  of  both  races  in  the  rural  South  today 
is  for  a  richer  social  and  community  life — for  better  supported, 
more  forceful  and  satisfying  schools,  churches,  farmers'  and  farm 
women's  clubs,  corn  clubs,  canning  clubs,  libraries,  lyceums, 
musicals,  athletic  sports,  picnics,  rallies,  and  all  other  agencies 
of  rural  comradeship — and  in  none  of  these  agencies  of  a  richer 
social  life  can  the  two  races  mingle.  It  is  inevitable,  therefore, 
in  our  sparsely  settled  South  that  in  two  school  districts  each 


46  PHELPS-STOKE;S  FELLOWSHIP  PAPERS 

with  fifty  negro  families  and  fifty  white  families  neither  schools 
nor  churches  nor  social  life  can  be  half  as  good  as  for  either 
race  as  if  the  hundred  families  of  each  race  were  grouped  to 
gether. 

In  other  words,  ignoring  entirely  the  matter  of  a  feeling  of 
security  and  safety  for  the  wives  and  children  of  our  white 
farmers,  we  have  to  face  the  fact  that  in  every  Southern  neigh 
borhood  so  long  as  we  maintain  our  fundamental  policy  of  social 
separation,  the  white  schools  will  be  the  poorer,  the  churches  will 
be  poorer,  the  social  life  and  community  life  will  be  poorer,  just 
in  proportion  as  negro  residents  displace  white  residents.  And 
because  it  is  not  practicable  to  carry  race  segregation  to  the  point 
of  excluding  negro  tenants  from  white  communities  is  no  rea 
son  why  we  should  not  go  as  far  as  present  circumstances  will 
permit,  and  at  least  allow  white  communities  to  limit  future  land 
sales  to  white  people. 

In  North  Carolina  such  a  plan  for  race  segregation  in  land 
ownership  is  now  definitely  before  the  people  and  it  is  fast  be 
coming  an  issue  in  other  States.  After  being  twice  overwhelm 
ingly  endorsed  by  the  State  Farmers'  Union,  the  measure  came 
before  the  Senate  of  North  Carolina  at  its  recent  session,  in  the 
form  of  a  Constitutional  Amendment  to  be  submitted  to  the  peo 
ple,  and  at  this  its  very  first  appearance  lacked  but  two  votes  of 
receiving  a  majority  of  the  votes  cast.  In  fact,  it  received  a  clear 
majority  of  all  the  Democratic  Senators  voting,  received  the  only 
Republican  vote  from  that  half  of  the  State  containing  the  prin 
cipal  part  of  the  negro  population,  while  from  all  that  half  of 
the  State  east  of  Greensboro  where  the  people  really  know  con 
ditions,  only  four  votes  were  cast  against  it.  This  Constitutional 
Amendment  is  intended  simply  to  give  effect  to  the  demand  of 
the  organized  white  farmers  of  the  State  for  a  law  providing : 

"That  wherever  the  greater  part  of  the  land  acreage  in  any 
given  district  that  may  be  laid  off  within  a  county  is  owned 
by  one  race,  a  majority  of  the  voters  of  such  a  district  should 
have  the  right  to  say,  if  they  wish,  that  in  future  no  land 
shall  be  sold  to  a  person  of  a  different  race — provided  such 
action  is  approved  or  allowed  (as  being  justified  by  con 
siderations  of  the  peace,  protection  and  social  life  of  the 
community)  by  a  reviewing  judge  or  board  of  county  com 
missioners." 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE)   SOUTH  47 

The  plan  as  you  will  see,  is  not  for  compulsory  negro  segrega 
tion  by  large  districts  but  for  voluntary  white  segregation  by 
neighborhoods.  And  now  let  us  see  how  such  a  plan  will  help. 
I  have  said  that  at  present  the  white  farmer  suffers  from  two 
forms  of  unfair  competition:  (1)  social,  (2)  economic.  That 
the  plan  for  land  segregation  between  the  races  will  prevent  the 
crowding  in  of  negro  landowners  into  white  communities  and 
thus  improve  social  conditions  is  obvious.  But  I  wish  especially 
to  emphasize  this  further  fact,  that  it  will  also  safeguard  our 
white  farmers  against  the  negro's  unfair  economic  competition— 
a  problem  the  whole  South  should  think  more  seriously  about. 
Of  the  nearly  one-fifth  of  a  million  increase  in  number  of  ten 
ant  white  farmers  in  the  South  in  the  last  census  decade — farm 
ers  of  Southern  white  blood  who  are  landless  and  homeless  to 
day,  and  who  with  their  wives  and  families  represent  an  increase  in 
the  South's  white  tenant  population  of  nearly  a  full  million  in 
ten  years — it  is  impossible  to  say  how  many  are  landless  be 
cause  of  having  to  face  competition  with  a  race  with  lower  liv 
ing  standards.  And  yet  the  obvious  explanation  Dr.  Charles  W. 
Stiles  gave  in  New  York  sometime  ago,  "These  people  have  been 
living  for  generations  in  competition  with  negro  labor;  that  very 
competition  has  made  them  poorer,"  seems  almost  to  have  been 
suppressed  in  the  South.  Only  recently  the  New  York  Outlook, 
in  referring  to  the  increase  in  cotton  mill  population  in  South 
Carolina,  said  that  the  poor  white  farmers  "have  been  forced 
from  the  fields  by  Negro  competition  and  have  flocked  to  the 
mill  towns.'' 

Now  through  land  segregation  we  should  be  able  to  encourage 
in  homogeneous  white  communities  those  cooperative  organiza 
tions  of  farmers  for  improved  farm  business  that  have  revolu 
tionized  the  agriculture  of  Denmark  for  example,  "making  it 
a  little  land  full  of  happy  people,"  and  of  Ireland  and  other 
European  countries,  and  this  is  work  in  which  it  is  almost  impos 
sible  for  whites  and  blacks  to  work  together  effectively.  That  is 
how  our  white  farmers  will  be  enabled  to  "defend  their  higher 
living  standards,"  to  use  Professor  Branson's  term.  In  those 
all-white  communities  with  the  tonic  atmosphere  of  equality, 
democracy,  brotherhood,  comradeship,  and  a  higher  intellectual 


48  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP   PAPERS 

life,  we  should  develop  a  more  highly  organized,  diversified  and 
profitable  agriculture  such  as  already  characterizes  our  all-white 
Western  States,  Germany,  France,  Denmark,  etc.  The  white 
farmers,  in  short — more  intimately  bound  together  and  more 
effectively  working  together — through  more  scientific  farming 
and  better  organized  farm  business,  through  cooperative  owner 
ship  of  improved  machinery,  cooperative  breeding  of  better  live 
stock,  cooperation  in  crop  production,  crop  marketing,  and  in  all 
forms  of  farm  activity,  will  get  out  of  competition  with  low- 
grade  negro  labor,  so  that  their  higher  living  standards  will  no 
longer  be  "undefended''  against  negro  competition.  They  will  be 
defended  through  the  cooperation  and  cumulative  application  of 
the  white  man's  higher  skill  and  intelligence. 

Moreover,  a  highly  important  point  is  this — that  we  can  never 
hope  to  settle  and  develop  the  South,  we  can  never  hope  to  get 
the  best  class  of  Northern  and  Western  farmers  to  come  South, 
if  they  must  settle  in  mixed  neighborhoods.  But  they  would 
come  and  come  quickly  to  homogeneous  all-white  communities. 
I  have  letters  from  all  sections  of  the  North  bearing  on  this 
point,  and  I  have  the  testimony  of  some  of  the  foremos*  railway 
authorities  in  the  country.  Race  segregation  in  land  ownership 
is  indeed  the  first  step  toward  securing  for  the  South  that  denser 
population  without  which  she  is  forever  handicapped. 

And  now  with  this  brief  statement  of  its  purposes,  let  us  con 
sider  some  of  the  questions  that  may  be  asked  about  the  plan, 
for  I  am  always  anxious  to  consider  any  inquiries. 

Question:  "Is  it  constitutional — that  is  to  say  in  harmony 
with  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States?" 

Answer:  Upon  this  point  a  remarkably  able  affirmative  opin 
ion  has  been  prepared  by  Honorable  James  S.  Manning,  formerly 
a  Judge  of  the  North  Carolina  State  Supreme  Court,  and  I  shall 
be  glad  to  send  a  copy  to  anyone  interested. 

Question:    "Has  the  plan  been  tried  anywhere?" 

Answer:  Nowhere  else  in  the  world  are  negroes  and  whites 
in  great  numbers  living  together  side  by  side  as  here  in  the  South, 
except  in  South  Africa.  For  years  and  years  our  brother  Eng 
lish  people  there — white  farmers  who  went  from  England  there 
just  as  our  ancestors  came  from  England  here — struggled  with 


THE   NEGRO  IN  THE}   SOUTH  49 

just  such  conditions  as  we  now  face  in  the  South.  On  a  trip 
abroad  three  years  ago  the  writer  discussed  the  subject  with  one 
of  the  most  eminent  white  statesmen  of  South  Africa  and  he 
declared  that  they  saw  but  one  remedy,  land  segregation.  Ac 
cordingly,  on  June  19th,  last  year,  the  law  went  into  effect — a  law 
which  prohibits  any  negro  in  the  Union  of  South  Africa  from 
buying  or  leasing  land  in  the  districts  set  apart  for  white  owner 
ship. 

Question:  "But  if  you  permit  negro  tenants  in  a  community 
are  they  not  just  as  great  a  drawback  to  the  white  community 
and  social  life  as  negro  landowners  ?" 

Answer:  The  negro  tenants  are  not  permanent  and  immov 
able  residents,  and  they  are  responsible  to  some  person  of  the 
white  race  who  can  in  a  measure  control  them.  Moreover,  it  is 
believed  that  where  a  white  neighborhood  votes  to  limit  future 
land  sales  to  whites,  it  will  be  easier  to  get  good  white  tenants 
into  such  community,  easier  to  get  a  sentiment  favoring  white 
tenants,  and  easier  also  to  .get  settlers  from  other  sections  as 
I  have  just  indicated,  and  thus  gradually  develop  a  wholly  white 
community.  Because  we  cannot  get  ideal  conditions  is  no  rea 
son  for  not  making  as  much  progress  as  it  is  possible  to  make. 

Question:  "But  is  it  not  the  thrifty,  honest  and  unobjection 
able  negroes  who  buy  land?  Do  these  negro  land-owners  really 
injure  the  rural  community?" 

Answer:  It  is  true  that  the  negroes  who  become  land-owners 
are  usually  the  better  class  of  negroes.  But  even  if  only  good 
negroes  bought  land,  bad  negroes  may  inherit  it,  and  it  is  in 
fact,  a  matter  of  common  observation  that  the  children  of  these 
original  negro  land-owners  are  frequently  the  most  objection 
able,  immoral  and  insolent  to  be  found.  Consider  my  own  case. 
Two  old  negroes  years  ago  bought  farms  adjoining  mine.  They 
were  good,  honest,  law-abiding  old  negroes  and  I  have  never 
heard  a  word  against  them.  But  the  son  of  one  of  them,  after 
long  being  a  menace  to  the  neighborhood,  is  just  completing  his 
third  term  in  the  penitentiary ;  while  as  for  the  descendants  of 
the  other,  one  negro  was  killed  in  their  house  in  a  drunken  brawl 
and  the  community  life  has  been  demoralized  by  them  in  other 
ways.  Moreover,  if  all  negroes  who  bought  land  were  good 


50  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

negroes  and  their  descendants  could  be  guaranteed  to  be  good 
negroes,  they  do  not  support  the  fundamental  social  institutions 
of  our  race. 

Question:  "But  is  it  not  true  that  white  people  leave  the 
farms,  not  because  of  the  negro,  but  because  of  unattractive  con 
ditions — because  they  want  a  better  social  life,  better  schools, 
and  churches,  less  isolation  ?" 

Answer:  Here  again  we  have  in  large  measure  a  secondary 
form  of  our  primary  problem.  Why  are  the  schools,  churches, 
social  life,  etc.,  as  poor  as  they  are  in  the  average  Southern 
neighborhood?  Because  of  the  negro.  Because  the  schools, 
churches,  social  life,  etc.,  merely  exist  at  a  half-dying  rate  with 
the  support  of  only  half  the  population  instead  of  flourishing  with 
the  united  support  of  all  the  population  as  is  the  case  in  wholly 
white  communities.  It  is  not  supposed,  of  course,  that  land  seg 
regation  between  the  races  would  stop  the  drift  to  the  cities,  but 
it  is  believed  that  it  would  so  help  check  it  and  so  attract  the 
best  class  of  white  farming  people  from  the  North  and  West  as 
to  serve  our  one  great  need  which  is  to  make  the  South  increas 
ingly  whiter  instead  of  increasingly  blacker. 

Question:  "But  why  can't  the  matter  be  settled  by  public 
opinion?  That  is  to  say,  why  can't  the  people  of  a  community, 
when  it  seems  wise,  decide  by  private  agreement  not  to  sell  more 
land  to  negroes  ?" 

Answer:  For  the  reason  that  if  all  resident  land-owners 
should  agree  to  this  policy,  in  a  very  great  proportion  of  our 
farm  neighborhoods,  the  land  is  largely  owned  by  absentee  land 
lords  who  do  not  care  how  much  they  may  offend  public  opin 
ion  in  the  community,  nor  how  much  the  white  residents  may  be 
discommoded,  provided  only  they  secure  such  prices  as  they  wish 
for  their  land. 

Question:  "Suppose  such  a  constitutional  amendment  as  the 
North  Carolina  Legislature  considered  were  passed,  let  us  see 
just  how  the  principle  would  be  applied.  In  other  words,  what 
would  be  its  practical  legal  operations?" 

Answer:  Well,  the  plan  is  just  this.  Take  the  old  neighbor 
hood  in  which  I  was  reared.  Suppose  we  wished  to  take  ad 
vantage  of  this  segregation  act.  We  could  lay  off  our  district 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE}   SOUTH  51 

and  have  a  properly  signed  petition  presented  to  the  judge  or  the 
board  of  county  commissioners  certifying  that  two-thirds  or 
three-fourths  of  the  land  in  the  district,  as  the  case  might  be, 
was  owned  by  our  race  and  that  for  the  promotion  of  the  peace, 
protection  and  social  life,  we  desired  to  vote  on  the  question  of 
limiting  future  land  sales  to  persons  of  the  same  race.  If  the 
petition  was  in  proper  legal  form  and  the  other  legal  conditions 
were  complied  with,  the  question  would  be  decided  at  the  fol 
lowing  biennial  election.  My  idea  would  be  to  have  it  decided 
simply  as  a  feature  of  the  regular  election  and  not  have  the  added 
excitement  of  a  special  campaign  or  special  election.  If  this 
proposition  carried,  then  after  a  certain  definite  date  no  more 
land  in  such  a  district  could  be  sold  to  a  person  of  a  different 
race. 

Question:  "But  isn't  the  natural  result  of  this  legislation  to 
make  the  negroes  in  large  measure  serfs  and  deprive  them  of 
their  natural  rights?" 

Answer:  No  such  spirit  has  been  manifested  on  the  part  of 
the  promoters  of  the  movement.  Their  purpose  is  to  protect 
our  white  civilization,  not  to  oppress  the  negro.  After  such  white 
neighborhoods  as  wish  to  do  so  adopt  the  land  segregation  prin 
ciple,  there  will  be  abundant  opportunity  for  negroes  to  buy  land, 
and  with  the  mobility  of  population  at  this  time,  there  need  be 
no  fear  upon  this  point.  In  fact,  the  proposal  in  North  Carolina 
is  that  no  race  shall  segregate  to  itself  a  greater  proportion  of 
the  lands  of  the  State  than  its  proportion  of  the  State's  popula 
tion — a  plan  which  abundantly  protects  the  negro's  rights. 

Question:  "Will  there  not  be  danger  then,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  the  white  man's  rights  will  be  imperiled  by  negroes  segregat 
ing  communities  to  negro  ownership?" 

Ansiver:  In  the  practical  operation  of  the  law  it  will  be  very 
rare  that  negroes  will  be  able  to  segregate  communities  except 
where  they  own  virtually  all  the  land.  The  matter  must  come 
up  upon  petition  from  voters  or  freeholders,  and  in  case  the 
negroes  should  plan  a  gerrymandered  district  in  such  a  way  as 
to  injure  the  rights  of  the  whites,  it  will  be  easy  for  the  white 
people  to  propose  a  larger  district  they  could  control.  It  would 
probably  be  provided,  however,  that  no  school  district  or  town- 


52  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

ship  in  which  two-thirds  of  the  land  was  owned  .by  one  race 
should  be  included  in  any  larger  district  segregated  to  a  different 
race. 

Question:  "But  will  not  this  proposition  stir  up  race  feeling?" 
Answer:  Present  conditions  which  enable  negroes  to  move 
into  white  communities  and  practically  force  white  residents  out, 
are  creating  the  bitterest  form  of  race  feeling  the  South  has 
ever  known  and  unless  some  legal  and  reasonable  plan  of  pro 
tection  for  white  communities  is  offered,  we  shall  have  race 
trouble  in  far  worse  form  than  if  the  matter  can  be  adjusted  in 
some  legal  fashion,  setting  apart  communities  in  which  the 
negroes  will  know  they  cannot  buy  land  but  leaving  others  open 
to  them. 

And  now  let  me  say  in  conclusion  that  it  is  all  true  enough,  of 
course,  that  allowing  white  communities  to  limit  future  land 
sales  to  white  people  will  only  partially  solve  the  South's  rural 
race  problem,  but  it  is  at  least  a  step  in  the  right  direction,  the 
logical  next  step  for  our  Southern  people,  and  nearly  all  progress 
is  made  by  steps.  The  plan  will  at  least  enable  people  in  white 
communities  to  stand  up  and  say,  "We  do  not  wish  any  more 
negroes  as  permanent  and  immovable  residents  here,"  and  so 
stop  absentee  landlords  (they  are  mainly  responsible)  from  ig 
noring  the  public  sentiment  of  the  community.  And  having  taken 
this  first  step  it  will  be  easier  to  build  up  a  race  pride  in  that  dis 
trict,  easier  to  encourage  white  tenants  to  take  the  place  of 
negro  tenants,  easier  to  get  thrifty  and  enterprising  farmers 
from  other  sections,  and  thus  gradually  develop  a  thoroughly 
prosperous  and  progressive  neighborhood  of  comrade  white 
farmers  with  all  the  inspiring  advantages  such  a  community  af 
fords. 

IV. 

Such  then  my,  friends,  are  the  advantages  of  the  plan  for  land 
segregation  between  the  races  in  the  South,  and  while  nobody 
supposes  that  a  plan  with  positive  advantages  will  not  have  some 
disadvantages,  the  net  advantages  in  favor  of  the  plan  are  such 
that  the  proposition  I  shall  now  submit  can  hardly  be  gainsaid. 
That  proposition  is  this,  that  if  the  South  had  adopted  this 
policy  after  the  war,  if  it  had  been  the  custom  all  these  years  to 


THE   NE)GRO  IN  THE)   SOUTH  53 

reserve  certain  communities  exclusively  for  white  ownership, 
keeping  the  land  in  white  hands  for  the  better  support  of  the 
white  social  life,  schools,  churches,  etc.,  making  these  neighbor 
hoods  virtual  "cities  of  refuge"  in  which  those  who  wished  to 
escape  mixed  communities  might  build  worthy  homes  for  them 
selves  and  their  descendants  with  the  assurance  that  they  would 
never  be  surrounded  by  negro  land-owners — if  this,  I  say,  had 
been  our  policy  all  these  years,  can  you  imagine  the  revolution 
that  would  now  be  raised  if  it  were  proposed  to  repeal  this  happy 
exemption  and  throw  these  sections  open  to  a  mongrel  popula 
tion?  And  yet  if  it  would  have  been  a  good  policy  to  adopt  fifty 
years  ago,  why  is  it  not  a  good  policy  to  adopt  now  ? 

Something  must  be  done  to  save  the  rural  South  to  the  white 
race  and  here  the  appeal  of  the  men  of  our  race  is  not  for  in 
justice  but  for  justice.  They  demand  a  genuine  "equality" — the 
equal  right  of  an  advanced  civilization  to  perpetuate  itself  Iby 
righteous  regulations  in  competition  with  a  lower  civilization. 
They  demand  that  you  townsmen,  who  yourselves  live  in  com 
fortable  segregated  white  quarters  in  our  cities,  shall  put  your 
selves  by  your  sympathies  in  the  place  of  the  white  farmer  who 
may  at  any  time  have  an  absentee  landlord  put  some  vicious 
negro  next  to  his  isolated  home  and  wife  and  children,  miles  and 
miles  from  police  protection.  They  demand  that  you  men  in  the 
professions  and  in  commerce — as  fully  exempt  from  fierce  eco 
nomic  conflict  with  a  race  with  lower  living  standards  as  if  you 
lived  in  another  land — they  demand  that  you  shall  consider  the 
conditions  of  your  less  fortunate  brethren  who  must  sell  every 
load  of  tobacco,  every  bale  of  cotton,  every  bushel  of  apples, 
every  pound  of  meat,  in  competition  with  some  negro  farmer  or 
tenant. 

If  a  more  practical  program  of  betterment  than  Land  Segre 
gation  Between  the  Races  can  be  evolved,  I  shall  rejoice;  but  in 
the  face  of  the  crises  that  confronts  the  South  I  submit  that 
patriotic  men  should  support  a  proposed  remedy  or  propose  a 
better  one.  As  for  the  question  whether  segregation  shall  come 
through  legal  or  voluntary  means,  it  does  not  concern  me — if 
only  the  practicability  of  non-legal  methods  can  be  demonstrated. 
I  am  not  concerned  about  methods ;  I  care  only  for  results — re- 


54  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

suits  as  they  affect  not  only  our  rural  population,  my  friends, 
but  the  whole  future  destiny  of  the  South  and  of  America.  With 
the  rural  South  getting  whiter,  as  a  result  of  giving  rural,  white 
civilization  an  equal  chance  for  growth  and  development,  no 
limit  can  be  set  to  the  South's  development.  With  the  rural 
South  getting  blacker,  as  a  result  of  present  unjust  conditions, 
there  is  a  complete  denial  of  all  the  great  future  that  otherwise 
seems  open  before  us. 

Ominous,  relentless,  inescapable,  the  problem  faces  us  like 
another  grim  and  terrible  Sphinx,  "propounding  her  riddle  to  the 
passers-by,  which  if  they  could  not  answer,  she  destroyed  them"; 
there  being  indeed  a  sinister  coincidence  in  the  fact  that  the 
Greeks  themselves  in  telling  their  own  story  of  the  half-beast, 
half-goddess,  and  her  fatal  riddle,  were  wont  to  say  that  the 
anger  of  the  gods  had  brought  her  to  them  "from  the  farthest 
parts  of  Ethiopia." 

Unless  we  be  men  of  a  little  breed  we  must  face  the  issue, 
and  face  it,  my  friends,  with  a  sense  of  the  magnitude  of  the  in 
terests  involved,  a  realization  that  the  destinies  of  a  more  than 
imperial  land  are  placed  in  our  keeping.  In  the  eleven  strictly 
Southern  States  from  Virginia  to  Texas  inclusive,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  new  empire  of  Oklahoma,  we  have  an  area  greater  than 
the  combined  areas  of  Greece,  Italy,  Switzerland,  France,  Ger 
many,  Holland,  Belgium,  Denmark,  England,  Scotland,  and  Ire 
land,  and  in  the  providence  of  God  we  may  well  achieve  a  civili 
zation  as  varied  and  historic  as  theirs.  It  is  in  our  power  to  be 
the  builders  of  empires  yet  to  be,  to  be  among  those  who  "raise 
up  the  foundations  of  many  generations" ;  while  on  the  other 
hand,  by  a  fatal  indifference  and  inertia  we  may  prove  ourselves 
traitors  alike  to  the  history  and  the  future  of  our  race. 

William  Archer,  the  eminent  English  student  of  our  race  prob 
lems  puts  the  matter  conservatively  when  he  says  of  our  South 
ern  States  that  "they  are  fitted  by  their  climate  and  resources  to 
be  not  only  a  white  man's  land,  but  one  of  the  greatest  white 
men's  lands  in  all  the  world."  And  with  proper  adjustment  of 
our  race  problem,  which  he  believes  calls  for  an  even  more 
drastic  race  segregation  than  I  have  advocated — he  declares  that 
the  South  would  "awaken  as  if  from  a  nightmare  to  a  realiza- 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE)   SOUTH  DO 

tion  of  its  splendid  destiny,"  and  "a  region  perhaps  the  most 
favored  by  Nature  in  all  the  Western  Hemisphere  would  stand 
where  it  ought  to  stand — in  the  van  not  only  of  civilization  but 
of  humanity." 

With  you  and  all  other  men  who  love  their  race  and  section, 
I  leave  this  problem  as  a  burden  upon  your  hearts  and  conscien 
ces.  No  other  condition  in  all  our  Southern  country  demands 
more  emphatically  of  our  statesmanship  and  of  our  citizenship  a 
new  and  positive  and  constructive  policy. 


The    New    Reconstruction. 


BY   WM.   O.    SCROGGS. 

It  is  both  an  honour  and  a  privilege  to  address  the  students 
of  this  University  upon  a  subject  of  such  concern  as  that  of 
our  race  relations  in  the  South.  There  is  a  growing  conviction 
among  our  thoughtful  citizens  that  while  an  immediate  solution 
of  the  problem  is  not  forthcoming,  a  more  satisfactory  racial 
adjustment  is  both  necessary  and  practicable,  and  we  may  now 
observe  many  efforts  under  way  to  effect  a  reconstruction  in  the 
relationships  of  our  white  and  coloured  citizens.  The  ultimate 
success  of  this  work  of  reconstruction  will  depend  in  no  small 
degree  upon  the  attitude  which  those  who  are  now  students  in 
our  colleges  will  assume  toward  the  movement.  If  they  are 
receiving  such  an  education  as  will  enable  them  to  approach 
their  civic  duties  and  responsibilities  with  what  we  usually  call 
the  social  point  of  view,  if  they  are  being  imbued  with  the  spirit 
of  social  service,  we  need  fear  no  reactionary  outcome.  To  ad 
dress  an  audience,  therefore,  which  is  soon  to  constitute  a  very 
influential  element  of  our  younger  citizenship,  upon  a  topic  of 
such  vital  importance  to  our  people,  is  a  task  not  to  be  lightly 
undertaken ;  but,  as  the  minister  says  when  he  pronounces  the 
marriage  service,  it  should  be  entered  upon  ''reverently,  dis 
creetly,  advisedly,  soberly,  and  in  the  fear  of  God." 

One  of  the  most  important  functions  of  our  Southern  colleges 
should  be  the  development  among  their  students  of  a  rational 
viewpoint  on  all  matters  pertaining  to  interracial  relations.  In 
vestigation  has  convinced  many  of  us  that  while  our  people 
as  a  whole  feel  very  intensely  concerning  this  problem  they 
know  very  little.  Much  of  the  discussion  that  we  hear  is  merely 
an  airing  of  the  emotions.  Very  few  of  our  people  have  any 
knowledge  of  the  actual  civic,  economic,  educational,  hygienic, 
or  moral  conditions  among  the  negroes  even  of  their  own  com 
munities,  and  with  so  little  information  at  hand  they  can  form 

56 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  57 

no  real  judgment  concerning  the  public  policy  that  every  intelli 
gent  citizen  should  advocate. 

Even  among  those  who  have  devoted  some  study  to  the  prob 
lem  there  seems  at  first  sight  to  be  utter  confusion  of  thought. 
We  find  one  student  aglow  with  optimism;  another  filled  with 
boding  pessimism.  One  tries  to  show  us  that  negro  schools  are 
steadily  improving,  that  illiteracy  is  rapidly  decreasing,  that  mob 
violence  is  less  frequent,  that  race  friction  is  diminishing,  that 
the  negro  is  increasing  in  numbers  and  in  wealth,  and  that  there 
is  more  sympathy  and  cooperation  between  the  leaders  of  the 
two  races  than  ever  before.  Another  at  the  same  time  tells  us 
that  the  gap  between  the  races  is  widening,  that  the  younger 
generation  of  whites  has  none  of  the  sympathy  for  the  negro 
that  was  found  among  the  former  slaveholders,  that  the  black 
man  is  not  holding  his  own  in  economic  competition  with  the 
white,  that  his  body  is  a  prey  to  devastating  diseases,  and  that 
relatively  to  the  whites  he  is  numerically  declining.  We  even 
find  contradictions  made  by  the  same  individual.  It  is  no  un 
common  thing,  for  example,  to  hear  some  one  declare  in  one 
breath  that  the  mulatto  is  the  weakest  and  most  vicious  ele 
ment  among  our  coloured  population,  and  in  the  next  breath 
to  declare  with  equal  conviction  that  the  only  negroes  who 
ever  accomplish  anything  are  those  who  have  white  blood  in 
their  veins.  We  may  expect  such  contradictions  so  long  as 
we  persist  in  our  inclination  to  loaf  and  generalize.  The  whole 
subject  has  been  too  much  beclouded  by  individual  preposses 
sions,  and  by  conjecture  and  controversy. 

Happily,  we  are  coming  more  and  more  to  realize  this  con 
dition,  and  there  is  now  apparent  among  our  people  a  growing 
desire  for  such  accurate  knowledge  as  will  aid  in  effecting  a 
more  satisfactory  racial  adjustment.  The  belief  that  once 
prevailed  to  the  effect  that  the  race  problem  would  eventually 
solve  itself  if  only  agitation  and  discussion  were  not  allowed 
to  disturb  the  process  of  this  adjustment  is  noW  quite  gen 
erally  discountenanced ;  for  experience  has  amply  demonstrated 
that  agitation  and  discussion,  like  Banquo's  ghost,  will  not  down. 
For  years  the  enlightened  citizenship  of  the  South  has  sat 
in  dignified  and  respectable  silence,  while  the  demagogue  quak- 


58  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

ing  with  the  assumed  fear  of  "negro  domination,"  and  shout 
ing  in  stentorian  tones  for  "Anglo-Saxon  supremacy,"  has  sum 
moned  to  the  hustings  and  the  polls  the  hosts  of  unlettered 
and  unsocialized  voters,  who  thereupon  have  elevated  this  agi 
tator  to  a  place  among  the  seats  of  the  mighty.  Perceiving  the 
wonderful  possibilities  which  the  race  issue:  possesses  in  the 
way  of  vote  getting,  politicians  have  even  gone  to  the  extent 
of  advocating  mob  violence,  if  this  seemed  an  effective  means 
of  riding  into  power. 

While  such  men  have  woefully  misrepresented  the  South, 
they  have  reached  a  vastly  greater  audience  than  have  those 
who  entertain  a  more  enlightened  opinion.  Moreover,  while  the 
designing  office-seeker  has  raged  and  imagined  vain  things,  our 
real  leaders,  by  their  silence,  have  perhaps  created  the  impres 
sion  that  they  too  acquiesce  in  such  views.  Who  can  blame 
the  man  of  the  street  if  he  is  densely  ignorant  of  the  best 
Southern  thought  on  the  negro  problem ? 

The  time  has  arrived,  however,  when  the  thinking  as  well 
as  the  feeling  South  is  beginning  to  make  itself  heard.  The 
social  conscience  of  our  people  found  utterance  in  1912  through 
the  medium  of  the  Southern  Sociological  Congress,  which  de 
clared  itself  in  favour  of  dealing  with  the  race  problem  <4in  a 
spirit  of  helpfulness  to  the  negro  and  of  equal  justice  to  both 
races."  Even  more  auspicious  is  the  interest  of  our  Southern 
college  students,  which  has  manifested  itself  sometimes  spon 
taneously  by  the  formation  of  voluntary  classes  for  the  study 
of  the  negro  problem.  It  is  a  fact  of  enormous  import  that 
fifteen  thousand  white  college  students  in  the  past  four  years 
have  read  such  a  sane  and  suggestive  little  book  as  Dr.  Weather- 
ford's  Negro  Life  in  the  South.  And  this  is  by  no  means  all 
that  is  being  done  in  our  institutions  of  learning,  as  the  Civic 
Club  of  this  University  has  so  well  demonstrated.  In  the  con 
ferences  on  race  problems  at  the  meetings  of  the  Southern  So 
ciological  Congress  college  professors  have  taken  a  prominent 
part.  The  Southern  University  Commission,  consisting  of  one 
faculty  representative  from  each  of  our  Southern  State  uni 
versities,  is  devoting  its  efforts  to  the  encouragement  of  the 
study  of  the  race  problem  in  our  colleges  and  to  the  collection 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  59 

and  dissemination  of  such  information  as  will  aid  in  the  de 
velopment  of  sounder  views  with  regard  to  relations  between 
the  races. 

It  is  evident,  then,  that  a  reconstruction  of  race  relations  is 
actually  under  way,  and  that  for  some  time  it  has  been  proceed 
ing  almost  imperceptibly  and  yet  steadily  and  irresistibly.  This 
movement  I  choose  to  designate  as  the  New  Reconstruction. 
It  is  a  movement  for  better  education  for  both  whites  and  blacks, 
for  higher  moral  ideals  and  a  socialized  religion,  for  increasing 
cooperation  between  the  best  elements  of  both  races,  and  for 
greater  publicity  for  those  whose  views  are  based  on  reason 
rather  than  on  prejudice  and  tradition.  From  this  it  will  ap 
pear  that  the  New  Reconstruction  in  no  respect  resembles  the 
so-called  reconstruction  of  a  past  generation.  The  new  move 
ment  realizes  the  value  of  racial  solidarity  and  seeks  to  dis 
cover  and  work  with  the  well-established  currents  of  thought 
that  underlie  the  life  of  our  people.  This  were  far  better  and 
far  nobler  than  those  fruitless  efforts  of  the  past  to  create  an 
ideal  democracy  of  non-homogeneous  peoples  by  the  mere  fiat 
of  the  government.  Unnatural  and  distasteful  social  and  po 
litical  arrangements,  imposed  upon  any  people,  become  a  source 
of  grave  peril.  The  little  province  of  Bosnia,  torn  from  its 
natural  associations  became  last  summer  the  scene  of  a  deed 
that  has  destroyed  the  peace  of  Europe.  If  England  cannot 
assimilate  Ireland,  nor  Germany  Poland  and  Alsace-Lorraine, 
it  is  useless  to  look  forward  to  the  immediate  and  complete  social 
equilibration  of  the  whites  and  blacks  in  the  United  States. 
An  immediate  solution  of  the  problem  is  not  forthcoming.  In 
any  society  there  will  always  be  a  political  problem  so  long  as 
some  men  are  conservative  and  some  are  radical,  and  there  will 
always  be  a  race  problem  so  long  as  some  men  are  white  and 
some  black.  We  might  as  well  accept  the  dictum  that  the  negro 
will  never  become  an  integral  member  of  our  social  body  so 
long  as  he  remains  a  negro.  The  colour  line  is  drawn  every 
where — though  with  varying  degrees  of  rigidity — and  it  will 
always  prevent  his  complete  participation  in  the  life  of  the 
white  community.  Moreover,  the  more  closely  the  two  races 
are  drawn  together  in  large  numbers  on  a  plane  of  theoretical 


60  P HELPS- STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

equality,  the  more  tightly  will  the  colour  line  be  drawn.  For 
this  reason  the  social  barriers  between  Southern  whites  and 
blacks  are  much  greater  today  than  was  the  case  under  the 
slavery  regime. 

The  New  Reconstruction  will  come  not  by  way  of  govern 
mental  fiat,  but  by  the  gradual  process  of  evolution.  All  efforts 
in  the  past  to  hasten  the  social  integration  of  the  negro  by 
means  of  legislation  have  resulted  in  failure.  The  thirteenth 
amendment  secured  for  every  black  man  the  status  of  a  free 
man  but  not  that  of  a  citizen.  The  dictum  of  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court,  enunciated  in  1857  in  the  Dred  Scott  case,  had 
been  to  the  effect  that  slaves  were  not  citizens  and  could  not  be 
come  citizens,  even  when  emancipated  or  descended  from  free  ne 
groes.  To  secure  for  the  freedman  the  full  rights  of  citizen 
ship,  the  Federal  Congress  in  1866  passed  the  first  so-called 
Civil  Rights  Bill  over  the  veto  of  President  Johnson,  and  two 
years  later  the  gist  of  this  law  was  incorporated  into  the  Fed 
eral  Constitution  as  the  fourteenth  amendment.  Following  the 
ratification  of  this  amendment,  Congress  in  1875  passed  a  sec 
ond  Civil  Rights  Act,  which  prescribed  full  and  equal  accom 
modations  for  all  citizens,  regardless  of  colour,  in  hotels,  public 
conveyances,  and  places  of  amusement,  and  imposed  heavy  pen 
alties  for  violations  of  the  act. 

This  measure  marked  the  culmination  of  Federal  legislation 
in  behalf  of  the  civil  rights  of  the  black  man.  And  now,  four 
decades  thereafter,  we  may  well  inquire  what  benefits  this  law 
and  the  constitutional  amendment  upon  which  it  was  founded 
have  secured  for  the  negro  race.  The  fourteenth  amendment, 
instead  of  being  employed,  as  its  authors  intended,  for  the  pro 
tection  of  the  coloured  man,  has  been  invoked  by  corporate 
wealth  for  its  protection  against  hostile  State  legislation.  Ac 
cording  to  Mr.  Charles  W.  Collins,  by  1912  604  cases  involving 
the  interpretation  of  this  amendment  had  been  passed  upon  by 
the  Supreme  Court,  and  of  these  only  twenty-eight  bore  any 
relation  to  the  status  of  the  negro,  and  only  six  of  these  were 
decided  in  his  favour.  The  court  early  declared  that  in  case 
the  rights  of  a  citizen  were  curtailed  by  the  private  act  of  an 
individual,  the  citizen  should  look  to  his  State  and  not  to  the 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  61 

Federal  government  for  his  protection,  inasmuch  as  the  amend 
ment  was  designed  only  to  prevent  a  State  from  abridging  the 
privileges  and  immunities  appertaining  to  Federal  citizenship. 
Reasoning  along  similar  lines,  the  Court  in  1883  declared  the 
Civil  Rights  Act  of  1875  to  be  unconstitutional,  and  thus  vir 
tually  served  notice  upon  the  negro  that  he  was  no  longer  the 
ward  of  the  nation,  but  that  now  he  was  to  take  the  rank  of  "a 
mere  citizen,"  whose  rights  were  "to  be  protected  in  the  ordinary 
modes  by  which  other  men's  rights  are  protected."  This  de 
cision  marks  the  close  of  the  regime  of  special  protection  for 
the  negro  and  the  beginning  of  what  we  may  call  the  period  of 
natural  selection. 

The  efforts  to  bestow  the  ballot  upon  the  negro  by  govern 
mental  fiat  have  likewise  met  with  failure.  In  1865  persons  of 
colour  had  full  political  rights  in  only  five  States.  In  the  next 
four  years  State  constitutional  amendments  conferring  the  suf 
frage  upon  the  negro  were  submitted  to  the  voters  in  nine 
Northern  States  and  were  rejected  in  seven  of  them.  The  fif 
teenth  amendment,  proclaimed  in  effect  on  March  30,  1870, 
would  never  have  been  ratified  without  the  assent  of  the  former 
Confederate  States,  and  without  the  rule  of  the  bayonet  in  the 
South  this  assent  would  never  have  been  secured.  The  negro 
enjoyed  the  full  use  of  the  ballot  only  so  long  as  Federal  troops 
had  control  of  Southern  elections.  Following  their  withdrawal, 
the  black  man  was  debarred  from  the  polls  sometimes  by  force 
and  sometimes  by  fraud,  until  the  whites  wearied  with  such 
extra-legal  and  illegal  devices,  undertook  his  disfranchisement 
by  legal  methods.  It  is  worth  recording  that  the  States  in 
which  the  negroes  outnumbered  the  whites  took  the  lead  in  this 
movement, — Mississippi  in  1890,  South  Carolina  in  1895,  Louis 
iana  in  1898.  Then  Alabama  followed  in  1901,  North  Carolina 
and  Virginia  in  1902,  and  Georgia  in  1908.  To  achieve  the  dis 
franchisement  of  the  negro,  these  States  have  taken  cognizance 
of  certain  characteristics  of  the  coloured  race  which  may  be  used 
to  bar  him  from  the  polls  without  expressly  excluding  him  on 
the  ground  of  race,  colour,  or  previous  condition  of  servitude. 
Legal  restrictions  based  on  the  ability  to  read  and  write,  owner 
ship  of  property,  payment  of  poll  tax,  long  periods  of  residence, 


62  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

good  character,  good  understanding  of  the  constitution,  military 
service,  and  voting  ancestors  have  fully  achieved  the  purposes 
of  those  who  drafted  the  amendments :  they  have  deprived  the 
black  man  of  the  ballot  and  at  the  same  time  have  given  every 
white  man  the  opportunity  to  vote. 

Appeals  to  the  Federal  courts  against  these  provisions  have 
been  unavailing.  Even  before  the  disfranchisement  had  begun, 
the  Supreme  Court  declared  that  the  suffrage  was  not  conferred 
upon  any  one  by  the  fifteenth  amendment,  but  that  its  purpose 
was  to  prohibit  a  State  or  the  United  States  from  withholding 
the  ballot  on  account  of  race,  colour,  or  previous  condition  of 
servitude.  In  1903,  when  the  suffrage  clauses  of  the  Alabama 
constitution  were  attacked,  the  Court  declared  that  it  was  be 
yond  its  task  to  remedy  an  alleged  political  injury,  and  that  re 
lief  must  come,  not  from  the  judicial  but  from  the  political  de 
partment  of  the  government.  This  decision  did  not  determine 
the  validity  of  disfranchisement,  but  it  rendered  such  measures 
at  least  temporarily  immune  from  attack  through  the  courts, 
and  indicated  that  if  relief  were  sought  it  must  be  obtained  by 
Congressional  action. 

The  judicial  interpretations  of  the  Federal  amendments  and 
the  adoption  of  the  new  State  constitutions  have  resulted  in  the 
complete  undoing  of  the  old  Reconstruction,  and  have  paved 
the  way  for  the  racial  adjustment  which  we  may  call  the  New 
Reconstruction.  The  new  movement  must  profit  by  the  errors 
of  the  past  and  not  rely  upon  political  remedies.  In  this  respect 
we  already  find  ground  for  encouragement.  It  is  a  significant 
fact  that  in  the  last  presidential  election,  for  the  first  time  since 
the  Civil  War,  the  platforms  of  none  of  the  great  political 
parties  contained  any  reference  to  the  problem  of  the  negro. 
This  omission  is  not  to  be  lamented,  but  rather  should  it  be  an 
occasion  for  rejoicing  that  politicians  in  the  North  have  ceased 
to  find  it  profitable  at  regular  four-year  intervals  to  bewail  the 
plight  of  the  black  man.  Let  us  hope  that  politicians  of  the 
South  will  soon  find  it  to  their  interest  to  follow  the  example 
of  their  brethren  in  the  North  and  give  the  poor  negro  a  rest. 
The  foundation  of  the  new  work  lies  in  sympathy  and  coopera 
tion  between  the  races,  but  so  long  as  the  office-seeker  uses  the 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE}   SOUTH  63 

black  man  as  a  bogey  we  may  expect  only  mutual  distrust  and 
misunderstanding. 

Although  the  New  Reconstruction  contemplates  a  racial  read 
justment,  it  does  not  seek  to  alter  that  basic  fact  in  the  rela 
tions  of  whites  and  blacks  which  we  call  social  segregation. 
While  this  segregation  may  sometimes  result  in  practices  that 
do  not  square  with  our  theories  of  democracy,  and  may  even 
cause  the  whites  at  times  to  appear  illogical  and  inconsistent,  it 
is  nevertheless  the  means  by  which  the  race  responsible  for  the 
nation's  past,  present  and  future  achievement  has  maintained 
its  integrity.  Racial  separation  has  its  basis  in  the  group  in 
stinct  of  "consciousness  of  kind,"  and  is  not  to  be  lightly  dis 
missed  as  "senseless  prejudice"  and  "unreasoning  antipathy." 

While  under  the  New  Reconstruction  all  necessary  measures 
to  safeguard  the  integrity  of  both  races  should  be  favoured,  ef 
forts  should  be  also  made  to  eliminate  those  features  of  the  ne 
gro's  civic  status  which  seem  antagonistic  to  the  spirit  of  a  just 
government.  Dr.  Booker  T.  Washington  recently  said :  "Nowhere 
are  there  ten  millions  of  black  people  who  have  greater  oppor 
tunities  or  are  making  greater  progess  than  the  negroes  in  Amer 
ica."  Since  nine-tenths  of  these  black  people  live  in  the  South, 
the  Southern  negro  must  be  relatively  much  better  off  than  his 
cousins  on  the  Dark  Continent.  But  this  has  only  a  remote 
bearing  upon  our  own  problem.  The  question  for  our  consid 
eration  is  not  whether  our  coloured  people  are  in  better  condi 
tion  than  the  native  Africans,  but  whether  they  are  properly 
treated  as  native  Americans.  In  most  particulars  this  question 
may  be  answered  affirmatively.  In  his  Southern  home  the  negro 
has  been  accorded  a  large  measure  of  civil  rights;  he  enjoys 
protection  of  life,  limb,  and  property;  he  has  in  the  South, 
perhaps,  a  greater  degree  of  industrial  freedom  than  elsewhere 
in  this  country ;  and  he  can  secure  at  least  an  elementary  edu 
cation  for  the  asking.  Nevertheless  there  are  other  phases  of 
the  negro's  condition  which  cause  even  the  most  optimistic  lead 
ers  of  the  coloured  race  at  times  to  show  signs  of  discourage 
ment.  Sensible  negroes  do  not  protest  against  race  distinctions, 
but  they  do  sometimes  protest  when  such  distinctions  lead  to 
unfair  discriminations.  Some  time  ago  a  coloured  man  wrote 


64  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

to  a  leading  Southern  newspaper  as  follows :  "Whatever  may 
be  the  opinion  of  others  concerning  the  drawing  of  the  colour 
line  in  the  South,  the  thoughtful  negro  has  accepted  it  as  a 
fixed  principle,  realizing  that  the  race  has  absolutely  nothing 
to  fear  or  lose  by  social  separation.  Social  intermingling  has 
always  meant  social  degradation  to  the  less  advanced  element. 
*  *  *  The  negro  does  not  desire  social  intermingling.  All 
he  wants  is  a  square  deal  before  the  law."  Is  separation 
compatible  with  the  square  deal?  It  must  be  part  of  the  pro 
gramme  of  the  New  Reconstruction  to  make  it  so. 

A  number  of  instances  may  be  cited  in  which  race  distinctions 
have  resulted  in  something  less  than  the  square  deal.  The  ne 
gro  is  the  victim  of  unfair  discrimination  by  our  common  car 
riers.  For  his  inferior  accommodations  he  pays  the  same  fare 
as  the  white  man,  and  this  mistreatment  is  inexcusable.  Sep 
arate  coaches  are  a  necessity,  but  separation  should  not  be  al 
lowed  to  produce  injustice.  Separate  schools  are  also  a  neces 
sity,  but  there  are  indications  that  in  the  division  of  the  school 
fund  the  negro  does  not  get  a  square  deal.  In  some  of  our 
Southern  cities  he  is  taxed  for  the  maintenance  of  parks,  libra 
ries,  and  museums  for  the  exclusive  use  of  the  whites,  while 
the  members  of  his  own  race  are  not  provided  with  any  similar 
facilities.  Our  courts,  and  especially  our  inferior  courts,  some 
times  show  a  tendency  to  mete  out  to  the  black  man  the  extreme 
penalty  of  the  law,  while  in  the  white  man's  case  they  temper 
justice  with  mercy.  Again — and  this  is  the  most  serious  of  all — 
the  negro  is  too  frequently  the  victim  of  mob  violence,  though, 
happily,  such  statistics  as  we  have  show  that  lynching  is  on  the 
wane.  The  correction  of  such  untoward  conditions  should  be 
part  of  the  work  of  our  New  Reconstruction. 

A  new  phase  of  the  civic  treatment  of  the  negro  has  recently 
appeared  in  the  form  of  segregation  by  law  in  municipalities. 
In  both  the  North  and  South  the  urban  negro  population  is 
usually  to  be  found  in  a  district  apart  to  itself.  This  is  not  an 
unusual  phenomenon.  In  all  communities  where  diverse  ele 
ments  of  population  are  found,  there  is  a  noticeable  tendency 
toward  their  differentiation  and  segregation.  Our  American 
cities  have  their  Italian  quarters  and  their  China  towns  as  well 


THE   N£GRO  IN  THE}  SOUTH 


65 


as  their  coloured  districts,  and  this  racial  segregation  seems  to 
accord  with  the  wishes  of  those  concerned.  "All  flesh  consort- 
eth  according  to  kind,  and  a  man  will  cleave  unto  his  like."  In 
most  communities,  however,  the  colour  line  runs  nearly  parallel 
with  the  poverty  line,  and  the  conditions  in  the  negro  quarters 
are  frequently  those  of  the  slums.  It  is  natural,  then,  that  cer 
tain  more  prosperous  members  of  the  race  should  seek  to  es 
cape  from  the  poorly  built,  insanitary  dwellings  and  the  filthy 
and  neglected  streets  and  alleys  and  secure  homes  in  a  more 
wholesome  environment.  But  if  they  chance  to  move  into  a 
white  residence  district  they  soon  discover  that  their  advent  is 
most  unwelcome  to  their  new  neighbours.  In  all  parts  of  the 
country  many  and  varied  expedients  have  been  employed  to 
exclude  the  coloured  population  from  certain  sections  of  our 
cities.  In  the  last  few  years,  for  example,  property  owners  have 
organized  for  this  purpose  in  Kansas  City,  St.  Louis,  and  North 
Berkeley,  California.  During  the  year  1911  trouble  resulting 
from  the  purchase  by  negroes  of  property  in  white  residential 
sections  was  reported  in  Scranton,  Pennsylvania,  Kalamazoo, 
Michigan,  Logansport,  Indiana,  and  Seattle,  Washington.  At 
the  same  time  a  tendency  developed  on  the  part  of  a  number  of 
Southern  municipalities  to  enforce  the  separation  of  the  races 
into  different  residence  districts  by  law.  This  movement  had  its 
beginning  in  Baltimore,  in  1910,  with  the  passage  of  the  so- 
called  West  segregation  ordinance.  Judicial  obstacles  caused 
this  city  to  enact  four  segregation  ordinances  in  three  years. 
The  example  of  Baltimore  was  followed  by  the  cities  of  Rich 
mond,  Norfolk,  and  Ashland,  Virginia,  Atlanta,  Georgia,  Green 
ville  and  Anderson,  South  Carolina,  and  Greensboro  and  Win- 
ston-Salem,  North  Carolina.  A  general  segregation  statute  was 
enacted  by  the  Virginia  legislature  in  1912,  permitting  munici 
palities  so  desiring  to  designate  certain  sections  within  their 
limits  for  white  and  other  sections  for  coloured  residents.  The 
city  of  Roanoke  took  advantage  of  the  act  on  March  15,  1913. 

The  constitutionality  of  these  various  ordinances  has  not  yet 
been  finally  passed  upon,  though  several  have  been  judicially 
annulled  on  technical  grounds.  With  this  phase  of  the  ques 
tion  we  need  not  concern  ourselves.  If  public  sentiment  ap- 

— 5 


66  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

proves  such  measures  and  the  courts  are  convinced  that  the 
policy  is  wise  and  sound,  constitutions  will  be  construed  favour 
ably  to  the  ordinances.  We  are  concerned,  therefore,  not  so 
much  with  a  constitutional  problem  as  with  a  problem  of  social 
justice.  Legal  segregation  has  been  defended  on  racial,  social, 
and  economic  grounds.  Only  the  lowest  class  of  whites,  it  is 
claimed,  will  be  found  living  in  the  same  block  with  negroes, 
and  it  is  from  such  a  commingling  that  miscegenation  is  most 
likely  to  arise.  In  the  second  place,  racial  friction  is  greatest 
between  negroes  and  the  poorer  whites,  and  the  separation  of 
these  elements  will  be  conducive  to  law  and  order.  Again, 
segregation  is  held  to  be  desirable  for  economic  reasons :  when 
ever  negroes  move  into  a  community  its  real  estate  values  tend 
to  depreciate.  The  opponents  of  segregation  do  not  deny  that 
the  presence  of  a  negro  family  in  a  city  block  tends  to  depress 
property  values  in  that  neighborhood,  but  they  urge  that  the 
upward  progress  of  the  race  should  not  be  made  "to  depend  on 
the  price  of  land."  It  is  claimed  also  that  the  segregated  negro 
quarters  will  be  neglected  by  the  municipal  authorities,  so  far 
as  lighting,  paving,  drainage,  sewerage,  street  cleaning  and  polic 
ing  are  concerned,  and  that  the  negro  will  be  compelled  to  live 
in  the  least  desirable  parts  of  the  city.  This  last  statement  is 
true  even  in  those  cities  which  have  not  enacted  segregation  or 
dinances,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  legal  separation  can 
bring  about  any  considerable  deterioration  in  the  present  status 
of  the  coloured  city  dweller.  It  is  obvious  that  segregation  has 
been  developing  by  informal  social  action  during  a  long  period 
of  time,  and  any  discussion  of  the  relative  merits  of  formal  or 
informal  action  to  secure  this  end  must  be  largely  academic. 
The  real  question  is  whether  legal  segregation  results  in  a  square 
deal  for  the  black  man.  If  experience  proves  that  it  does  not, 
it  must  be  part  of  the  programme  of  the  New  Reconstruction 
to  correct  whatever  injustice  results  from  the  policy. 

A  measure  involving  an  entirely  different  principle  is  the  plan 
for  so-called  rural  segregation  strongly  advocated  since  1913  by 
Mr.  Clarence  Poe,  of  North  Carolina.  The  author  of  this  plan 
summarizes  it  as  follows :  "Whenever  the  greater  part  of  the 
land  acreage  in  any  given  district  that  may  be  laid  off  is  owned 
by  one  race,  a  majority  of  the  voters  in  such  a  district  shall 


THE  NEGRO  IN  THE;  SOUTH  67 

have  the  right  to  say,  if  they  wish,  that  in  the  future  no  land 
shall  be  sold  to  a  person  of  a  different  race — provided  such 
action  is  approved  or  allowed  (as  being  justified  by  considera 
tions  of  peace,  protection,  and  the  social  life  of  the  community) 
by  a  reviewing  judge  or  board  of  county  commissioners." 

An  examination  of  this  proposed  measure  shows  that,  what 
ever  may  have  been  the  intention  of  its  framer,  it  would  in  ac 
tual  practice  secure  only  a  partial  segregation  of  the  races  in 
rural  communities.  Negroes  owning  land  at  the  time  the  meas- 
sure  went  into  effect  would  not  be  affected,  and  coloured  labour 
ers  and  tenants  might  still  remain  in  the  districts  adopting  the 
plan.  The  plan,  when  analyzed,  appears  to  be  simply  a  scheme 
to  enable  the  voters  in  any  district  to  put  an  end  to  the  sale  of 
land  to  negroes.  As  very  few  negroes  vote,  it  would  be  impos 
sible  for  them  to  exclude  whites  from  any  community,  even 
though  they  outnumbered  the  whites  ten  to  one  and  owned  the 
greater  portion  of  the  land.* 

Eight  reasons  are  advanced  by  its  author  for  the  adoption 
of  the  plan :  ( 1 )  Rural  segregation  is  necessary  to  give  white 
farmers  and  their  families  a  satisfying  social  life;  (2)  it  will  in 
sure  them  greater  safety  and  protection;  (3)  it  will  secure  better 
schools,  churches,  and  other  agencies  of  community  welfare  for 
both  races;  (4)  it  will  make  possible  a  greater  degree  of  co 
operation  in  rural  communities,  as  racial  divisions  have  proven 
a  great  barrier  to  cooperative  enterprises;  (5)  it  will  improve 
the  moral  side  of  race  relationships;  (6)  by  checking  the  crowd 
ing  out  of  whites  by  blacks  and  providing  all-white  communi 
ties  it  will  attract  to  the  South  a  larger  proportion  of  immi 
grants  from  other  sections  and  countries  than  this  region  now 
receives;  (7)  segregation  will  make  it  possible  for  young  men, 
who  will  not  at  present  compete  with  negro  labour,  to  go  into 
the  white  districts  as  tenants,  save  and  become  independent 
landholders;  (8)  it  will  protect  certain  rural  districts  from  ab 
sentee  landlords,  who  now  sell  lands  to  negroes  regardless  of 
the  feelings  of  the  white  residents. 

Everyone    familiar    with    conditions    in   the    rural    South    will 


*See  the  article  by  Mr.  Gilbert  T.  Stephenson  in  the  South  Atlantic 
Quarterly,  April,   1914. 


68  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

admit  the  existence  of  many  of  the  evils  here  complained  of, 
but  it  does  not  follow  therefrom  that  the  scheme  of  segrega 
tion  offers  a  remedy.  That  there  is  an  unmistakable  tendency  for 
the  black  counties  to  grow  blacker  is  fully  attested  by  the  Fed 
eral  census.  This  crowding  of  the  whites  by  the  blacks  may  not 
be  attributed  to  the  greater  efficiency  of  the  latter,  as  it  has 
been  clearly  shown  that  the  progress  of  the  negroes  in  the  South 
varies  almost  inversely  with  their  numerical  ratio  to  the  whole 
population.  The  negroes  are  most  backward  where  they  greatly 
outnumber  the  whites,  and  they  crowd  out  the  whites  in  these 
communities  just  as  unskilled  labourers  with  low  standards  of 
living  tend  to  crowd  out  the  more  highly  skilled  workmen  in 
industrial  centres,  and  as  Mongolian  labourers  have  tended  to 
crowd  out  Caucasians  in  our  Pacific  States.  The  principles  of 
Gresham's  law  seem  operative  in  the  case  of  labour  as  well  as 
in  that  of  money. 

To  admit  these  facts,  however,  is  to  cut  the  ground  from 
under  the  argument  for  segregation.  If  the  whites  suffer  from 
the  presence  of  masses  of  unskilled,  low-standard  coloured  la 
bour,  the  obvious  remedy  is  to  take  measures  to  increase  its 
skill  and  raise  its  standards.  Segregation,  instead  of  achieving 
this  result,  will  work  in  the  opposite  direction,  as  experience 
fully  proves  that  black  districts  tend  to  retrograde.  The  negroes 
do  best  in  those  communities  where  they  are  outnumbered  by 
the  whites.  If  segregation  were  in  effect  in  any  rural  com 
munity  the  most  thrifty  and  industrious  negroes,  desiring  to 
acquire  land,  would  be  compelled  to  move  elsewhere,  leaving 
behind  them  the  shiftless  and  inefficient  of  their  race;  and  the 
last  state  of  that  community  would  be  worse  than  the  first. 

Racial  segregation  is  sought  in  our  cities  because  it  is  not 
deemed  desirable  that  the  two  races  should  be  constantly  touch 
ing  elbows.  In  the  country,  however,  abundant  elbow  room 
may  be  obtained  without  the  necessity  of  residential  segrega 
tion.  Let  us  remember,  too,  that  four-fifths  of  our  coloured 
population  is  rural,  and  that  the  proposed  concentration  of  this 
element,  in  its  present  stage  of  development,  in  solidly  black 
communities  would  cause  our  country  districts  to  be  dotted  here 
and  there  with  bits  of  "darkest  Africa"  even  more  than  is  the 
case  today  in  some  of  o*r  Black  Belt  counties ;  and  the  conse- 


THE   NEGRO  IN   TH£   SOUTH  69 

quences  would  be  unhappy  for  both  races.  The  scheme  of  rural 
segregation  is  the  most  mischievous  measure  that  has  been  pro 
posed  since  the  days  of  the  Old  Reconstruction.  For  years 
white  and  black  leaders  have  urged  the  negro  to  stay  away  from 
the  cities,  to  practice  thrift  and  acquire  property;  and  this  plan 
of  rural  segregation,  if  adopted,  would  make  it  impossible  for 
many  industrious,  law  abiding  members  of  the  race  to  follow 
such  sane  advice.  It  is  inconsistent  with  any  practicable  move 
ment  for  better  racial  relations,  and  should  be  opposed  by  all 
who  desire  the  progress  of  the  white  and  justice  for  the  black. 

And  now  after  this  attempt  to  describe  the  present  civic  status 
of  the  negro  in  America  and  to  interpret  to  you  the  ideals  and 
methods  of  the  New  Reconstruction,  I  wish  in  conclusion  to 
emphasize  one  very  important  fact.  Those  who  would  aid  in 
conducting  the  work  should  be  blest  with  an  infinite  amount  of 
patience.  We  must  expect  to  achieve  progress  only  through 
evolution ;  and  in  spite  of  the  scoffings  of  many  so-called  re 
formers,  Herbert  Spencer  was  right  when  he  preached  that 
evolution  is  most  satisfactory  in  its  results  when  its  processes 
are  slow.  No  better  example  of  the  folly  of  attempting  to  force 
the  process  of  social  evolution  can  be  given  than  that  which  is 
shown  by  the  history  of  the  Old  Reconstruction. 

Much  of  the  inspiration  for  the  new  work  must  come  from  our 
educational  centres.  More  and  more  our  thoughtful  citizens  are 
calling  upon  the  universities  which  they  support  with  their  taxes 
to  aid  them  in  solving  their  various  problems, — problems  which 
are  not  only  educational,  but  also  industrial,  social,  and  moral. 
More  and  mere  our  universities  are  perceiving  their  duties  and 
opportunities  in  this  respect,  and  they  are  beginning  to  realize 
their  share  of  the  responsibility  for  the  manner  in  which  the 
greatest  of  all  our  problems  is  treated.  Let  us  hope  that  this 
new  conception  of  duty  will  cause  them  to  strive  more  than  ever 
before  to  send  forth  constructive  leaders, — men  who  will  dare 
be  radical  when  to  be  radical  means  to  be  right ;  who  will  have  the 
courage  to  be  conservative  when  conservatism  is  demanded  by 
conscience;  and  who  will  dare,  if  need  be,  to  beard  the  blatant 
demagogue  and  challenge  the  sovereignty  of  King  Mob.  It 
must  be  men  of  this  type  who  bring  the  New  Reconstruction  to 
its  consummation. 


Some    Public    Health    Aspects    of    Race    Relationships 
in    the    South. 


BY   JAMES   BARDIN. 


In  the  South  there  are  some  ten  millions  of  Negroes,  living 
side  by  side,  and  in  the  most  intimate  relationship  with  the 
white  people.  Physically,  mentally  and  morally,  the  Negroes 
are  different  from  their  companion  race.  They  evolved  in  a 
different  part  of  the  world,  in  totally  different  environmental 
conditions.  They  possess  a  physical  organism  and  a  physiolog 
ical  organization  suitable  to  tropical  regions.  They  have  be 
hind  them  no  racial  experiences  with  the  diseases  common  to 
the  whites.  They  possess  no  traditions  based  upon  ages  of 
evolution  in  intellect  and  soul.  They  seem  to  have  practically 
no  pride  of  race  or  of  family.  Their  minds  have  had  only  the 
short  space  of  some  two  hundred  years  in  which  to  lose  the  im 
press  of  savagery.  From  the  point  of  view  of  racial  psychology, 
they  possess  practically  not  a  single  characteristic  powerful 
enough  to  restrain  them  from  the  vices  of  our  civilization.  To 
day  we  find  them  here  among  us,  living  in  the  midst  of  a  phys 
ical  environment  different  from  that  in  which  they  evolved,  in 
the  presence  of  a  civilization  which  they  took  no  part  in  form 
ing  and  which,  consequently,  has  not  contributed  to  the  strength 
ening  of  their  own  racial  characteristics. 

The  presence  of  the  negroes  in  a  physical,  social  and  racial 
environment  so  different  from  that  in  which  they  were  evolved 
has  produced  many  consequences  of  racial  rather  than  sociolog 
ical  import,  and  these  consequences  affect  both  blacks  and  whites, 
reciprocally.  In  the  first  place,  as  he  was  not  sufficiently  pre 
pared  in  the  school  of  nature  to  take  part  in  the  white  man's 
social  systems — as  he  was  racially  incapable  of  adjusting  him 
self  to  the  radical  changes  incident  upon  his  entrance  into  the 
white  man's  environment — the  Negro  has  to  a  large  extent 
become  the  victim  of  the  civilization  into  which  he  was  thrust 
by  an  institution  which  was  unnatural  in  more  senses  than  one. 

70 


THE  N£GRO  IN  THE  SOUTH  71 

And  the  white  man  has  in  turn  come  to  be  menaced  by  the  fact 
that  the  Negro  has  been  unable  to  withstand  the  evil  side  of 
Caucasian  civilization. 

Experience  shows  us  that  when  an  inferior  and  a  superior 
race  come  into  daily  and  intimate  contact,  either  of  two  things 
happens;  the  inferior  race  is  either  completely  engulfed  and  as 
similated  by  the  superior;  or  a  sort  of  biological  conflict  is  set 
up  between  the  two  races,  the  end  of  which  is  the  destruction 
of  one  or  the  other.  The  second  of  these  alternatives  is  the 
condition  which  has  obtained  very  often  in  history :  I  need  but 
to  cite  the  case  of  the  native  Hawaiians,  and  of  the  Indian 
tribes  in  this  country  who  have  established  close  relationships 
with  the  whites.  In  the  south  today  this  condition  is  the  one 
which  obtains;  we  are  in  the  presence  of  such  a  biological  con 
flict;  and  while  the  altruistic  ideals  of  our  civilization  and  the 
humanity  of  the  Christian  religion  serve  to  mitigate  somewhat 
the  relentless  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  the  conflict  is 
nevertheless  a  deadly  one.  We  see  expressions  of  it  every 
where,  among  both  blacks  and  whites.  But  these  expressions 
are  more  marked  in  the  negro,  because,  since  he  is  ethnically  the 
inferior  race,  he  is  bearing  the  brunt  of  the  battle.  Some  of 
these  manifestations  are  of  extreme  significance.  As  an  evi 
dence  of  their  impermeability  to  our  civilization,  one  needs  but 
to  recall  the  ease  with  which  the  negro  masses  will  revert  to 
barbaric  conditions  of  life  if  left  to  themselves.  As  evidence 
of  their  anti-social  tendencies  when  judged  by  the  standards  of 
our  public  morals  and  laws,  one  has  but  to  contemplate  the 
only  too  well  authenticated  facts  in  respect  of  the  enormous 
amount  of  crime  committed  by  a  relatively  small  Negro  pop 
ulation.  And,  finally,  as  evidence  of  their  lack  of  adaptability 
to  their  physical  environment,  one  has  but  to  observe  the  amount 
of  disease  and  degeneracy  present  in  the  race. 

I  propose  to  confine  myself  to  this  last-named  factor  in  the 
Negro's  relationship  to  us — the  factor  of  his  reaction  to  his 
physical  environment  as  expressed  in  the  amount  of  disease 
and  degeneracy  present  in  the  race ;  I  shall  also  endeavor  briefly 
to  point  out  some  of  the  consequences  to  the  white  people  of  this 
disease  and  degeneracy  among  the  Negroes. 


72  PHEIvPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

For  the  sake  of  convenience  and  clearness  of  presentation, 
this  problem — the  Negro's  relation  to  the  health  of  the  South — 
may  be  divided  into  two  parts,  each  of  which  may  be  consid 
ered  separately  from  the  other,  and  each  of  which  has  its  own 
peculiar  significance.  The  first  of  these  divisions  embraces 
what  may  be  called  the  diseases  of  the  Negro  which  more  im 
mediately  affect  and  menace  the  State.  The  second  division  will 
include  those  diseases  which  affect  and  menace  the  individuals 
comprising  the  state.  Each  group  largely  overlaps  the  other,  of 
course.  In  the  first  group  I  propose  to  include  those  diseases 
which  so  affect  their  victims  as  to  make  them  or  their  descend 
ants  public  charges.  In  the  second  group,  I  shall  include  those 
diseases  which  are  dangerous  to  the  community  and  to  individ 
uals  because  of  their  infectious  .and  contagious  nature. 

The  diseases  comprising  the  first  group  may  be  spoken  of  as 
"diseases  producing  racial  degeneracy;"  that  is  to  say,  those 
diseases  which  manifest  themselves  as  hereditary  diseases,  or 
which,  if  not  actually  inherited  themselves,  produce  serious  and 
degenerating  weakness  in  successive  generations.  The  most  im 
portant  of  these  diseases  are,  of  course,  as  far  as  the  state  is 
concerned,  diseases  of  the  mind,  tuberculosis,  syphilis,  and  alco 
holism. 

As  an  index  of  the  effect  produced  by  these  diseases  upon 
the  social  organism,  we  may  with  most  profit  consider  the  eco 
nomic  burden  they  put  upon  the  tax-payers,  and  the  economic 
losses  they  occasion  in  many  ways  by  incapacitating  the  indi 
viduals  suffering  from  them.  Though  these  economic  losses  do 
not  by  any  means  express  either  the  burden  or  the  menace  of 
these  diseases,  some  idea  of  the  amount  of  such  losses  is  easily 
ascertained  and  indicates  to  the  student  the  significance  of  other 
factors,  just  as  the  steam-gauge  shows  by  its  figured  dial  the 
pressure  of  steam  in  the  boiler. 

At  the  present  time  there  are  in  the  South,  according  to  my 
estimate,  some  25,000  negro  insane.  Upon  the  basis  of  the  total 
negro  population,  this  means  that  there  is,  roughly,  one  insane 
negro  to  each  400  of  population.  The  rate  for  the  whites  in  the 
South  is  approximately  the  same.  The  two  races  have  about 
the  same  insanity  rate  upon  a  basis  of  equal  population  groups. 


THE  NKGRO  IN  THE  SOUTH  73 

In  respect  of  feeblemindedness  among  the  negroes,  we  can  not 
speak  with  any  certainty  at  all,  as  there  are  no  available  sta 
tistics.  But  from  such  evidence  as  I  have  been  able  to  accum 
ulate,  I  am  almost  certain  that  feeblemindedness  is  present  to 
a  large  degree  among  the  negroes,  and  is  rapidly  on  the  increase. 

Tuberculosis,  as  we  all  know,  is  extremely  prevalent;  the 
death  rate  per  thousand  from  this  disease  in  the  negroes  is  es 
timated  to  be  at  least  three  or  four  times  as  great  as  among  the 
whites.  The  disease  is,  furthermore,  apparently  on  the  increase 
in  the  cities  and  towns.  Per  thousand  of  population,  Surgeon 
Wertenbaker  of  the  Marine  Hospital  Service,  estimated  that 
Tuberculosis  is  four  times  as  prevalent  among  the  negroes  as 
among  the  whites. 

As  for  Syphilis,  there  is  no  trustworthy  information,  as  might 
be  expected.  But  I  have  arrived  at  some  conclusion  as  to  the 
amount  of  this  disease  among  the  negroes  by  the  analysis  of 
vital  statistics  and  by  the  results  of  some  laboratory  investiga 
tion  recently  carried  out.  In  the  first  place,  vital  statistics  show 
that  the  number  of  deaths  reported  as  due  to  this  cause  is  400 
per  cent,  higher  in  the  negroes  than  in  the  whites ;  this  figure  is, 
of  course,  very  misleading — but  it  nevertheless  has  some  sig 
nificance.  Of  more  consequence  are  the  statistics  of  still-births 
among  negro  women — a  great  number,  if  not  the  majority,  of 
which  are  due  to  luetic  infection.  Still  births  occur  about  three 
times  as  often  in  negro  women  per  thousand  as  among  white 
women.  This  figure  throws  much  light  upon  the  prevalence 
among  the  negroes  of  the  disease  in  question.  Still  more  defi 
nite,  however,  are  the  results  of  some  laboratory  investigations 
made  recently  in  one  of  the  large  hospitals  for  the  negro  insane. 
After  having  eliminated  all  negroes  known  to  have  the  disease, 
about  two  hundred  patients  were  chosen  at  random  and  their 
blood  was  tested  for  the  Wassermann  reaction  by  a  competent 
serologist.  Of  the  negroes  thus  tested,  about  thirty  per  cent, 
showed  infection.  We  may  conclude,  therefore,  that  not  only 
is  there  a  great  amount  of  the  disease  present  in  the  race,  but 
also  that  it  is  much  more  prevalent  than  among  the  whites. 

Alcoholism  presents  a  more  difficult  problem.  We  can  not 
say  precisely  that  it  is  on  the  increase.  Perhaps  we  might  ven- 


74  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

ture  the  statement  that  it  has  reached  its  limit,  and  that  except 
for  the  very  highest  classes  among  them,  all  the  negroes  are 
susceptible  to  and  suffering  from  this  disease  to  greater  or  less 
degree.  Associated  with  alcoholism,  and  of  more  import  and 
menace,  are  other  drug  habits,  which  of  late  years  have  begun 
to  spread  among  the  negroes.  Cocaine  is  the  chief  of  these  drugs, 
and  the  use  of  it  by  negroes  is  becoming  a  serious  and  grave 
problem.  Any  one  who  has  even  seen  a  person  on  a  "cocaine 
spree"  will  realize  the  gravity  of  such  a  habit  if  it  ever  becomes 
universal,  so  to  speak,  among  what  we  call  in  the  South  "bad 
negroes."  To  just  what  extent  it  is  being  used  we  have  no 
means  of  telling;  but  from  the  great  activity  of  the  post-office 
officials,  and  other  government  agents  who  are  striving  to  sup 
press  the  traffic  in  the  drug,  it  must  be  very  wide-spread. 

The  consequence  of  this  great  amount  of  degenerating  di 
seases  in  the  negro  race  are  many.  Indeed,  there  is  almost  no 
part  of  our  society  upon  which  they  do  not  have  some  effect. 
It  would  be  manifestly  impossible  for  me  to  enter  into  anything 
like  a  general  discussion  of  the  social  consequences  of  such  di 
seases,  even  if  I  were  able  to  do  so.  So  I  shall  have  to  con 
fine  myself  to  a  brief  discussion  of  some  of  the  effects  which 
are  most  obvious  and  of  most  significance,  and  trust  that  from 
the  information  thus  advanced  you  will  be  able  to  form  an  ad 
equate  idea  of  the  serious  nature  of  the  general  problem. 

As  I  have  said  before,  the  best  index  of  the  effect  of  such 
diseases  of  degeneracy  upon  society  is  to  be  found  in  the  losses 
they  occasion.  Let  us  for  a  moment  examine  some  of  the 
economic  effects  of  the  Negro's  diseases  upon  the  Southern  states. 
During  the  past  ten  years,  the  state  of  Virginia  has  expended 
$1,404,227  upon  the  care  of  the  negro  insane  alone.  The  state 
of  North  Carolina  has  expended  some  $750,000.  The  state  of 
Mississippi  about  $1,600,000.  Each  Southern  state  is  spending 
on  an  average  something  more  than  $110,000  per  year  upon 
the  care  of  negro  insane  alone — and  this  sum  is  far  inadequate 
to  provide  for  the  number  of  patients  who  should  be  in  the 
hospitals.  There  are  eleven  southern  states ;  it  is  evident,  then, 
that  these  eleven  states  have  spent  over  $12,000,000  in  the  past 
ten  years  in  caring  for  the  negro  insane.  An  equal,  and  un- 


THE  NKGRO  IN  THE)   SOUTH  75 

doubtedly  far  greater  sum,  has  been  expended  by  public  and 
private  hospitals  for  the  gratuitous  treatment  of  diseases  other 
than  insanity. 

You  may  be  interested  in  some  statistics  in  regard  to  the  Hos 
pital  of  the  University  of  Virginia;  these  statistics  will  give 
you  some  idea  of  the  sum  expended  in  the  hospitals  throughout 
the  South.  In  the  year  between  Feb.  1st,  1912  and  Feb.  1st, 
1913,  there  were  admitted  to  this  institution  521  negro  patients. 
These  negroes  remained  in  the  hospital  a  total  of  10,901  days. 
The  cost  to  the  hospital  for  their  maintenance,  which  includes 
their  food,  surgical  dressings  and  drugs,  and  does  not  include  the 
cost  of  operations,  the  physicians'  time,  and  so  forth,  is  esti 
mated  to  be  about  $1.00  per  day.  This  makes  the  total  cost  of 
maintaining  these  negro  patients  $10,901  per  year. 

Of  these  negroes,  152  agreed  to  pay  the  hospital  for  their 
maintenance.  I  say  agreed  to  pay,  for  this  is  as  far  as  about 
half  of  them  ever  go.  The  regular  charge  to  ward  patients  in 
the  hospital  is  $7.00  per  week  for  those  who  are  able  to  pay. 
The  average  amount  per  week  each  of  these  152  patients  agreed 
to  pay  was  eighty  cents  per  day — somewhat  less  than  the  regular 
ward  charge.  Each  of  the  152  patients  spend  an  average  of  21 
days  in  the  hospital.  If  all  of  them  had  paid  what  they  agreed  to 
pay — that  is,  $5.60  per  week — they  would  have  turned  into  the 
Hospital  $2,550  approximately.  Therefore,  if  they  had  all  paid 
— which  they  did  not — the  cost  of  treating  the  entire  521  patients 
would  have  been  $8,260  in  excess  of  the  amount  paid  in  by  ne 
gro  patients. 

These  figures  are  only  approximations,  but  they  indicate  the 
enormous  burden  Southern  charity  is  bearing  in  caring  for  sick 
negroes.  The  University  Hospital  is  fairly  representative  of 
all  general  hospitals  in  the  South.  If  the  negro  is  thus  costing 
the  Hospital  over  eight  thousand  dollars  a  year  more  than  he 
pays  in,  what  is  he  costing  all  the  hospitals  in  the  South.  The 
total  sum,  I  venture  to  state,  would  not  be  a  bagatelle,  to  be 
dismissed  lightly. 

It  is  totally  impossible,  of  course,  even  to  guess  at  the  money 
value  of  the  services  and  time  of  physicians  who  have  gratui 
tously  treated  negro  patients.  It  is  equally  impossible  to  esti- 


76  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

mate  the  loss  to  the  employers  of  negroes  caused  by  the  great 
amount  of  illness  among  their  help.  Such  figures,  if  obtainable, 
would  probably  reach  an  astounding  sum.  To  give  you  some 
notion  of  the  amount  of  this  loss,  I  need  but  to  bring  forward 
the  fact  that,  in  many  localities,  it  has  been  ascertained  over 
and  over  again  that  negro  laborers  are  absent  from  their  work 
almost  twice  as  often  and  twice  as  long  as  white  laborers  work 
ing  under  approximately  similar  conditions.  You  can  easily 
draw  your  own  conclusions. 

Such  figures  as  these,  which  are  after  all  but  pale  shadows 
of  the  reality  of  the  economic  losses  occasioned  to  the  Southern 
people  by  disease  among  the  negroes,  will  nevertheless  serve  to 
suggest  to  you  how  enormous  is  the  burden  we  bear.  These 
figures  stand  for  the  immediate,  the  obvious  effect,  of  such  di 
sease;  they  are  the  sign  of  the  weight  on  our  shoulders.  But 
they  also  indicate  something  else;  they  indicate  a  source  of  fur 
ther  burdens.  When  we  contemplate  them,  we  sooner  or  later 
will  ask  ourselves :  What  of  the  future  ? 

Naturally,  I  shall  not  attempt  to  answer  that  question.  But 
I  believe  I  can  point  out  a  few  things  which  will  at  least  give 
a  foundation  upon  which  a  prediction  might  be  based.  Let  us 
go  back  for  a  brief  review  of  the  Negro's  health  history  since 
slavery;  by  viewing  his  past  performances,  we  may  be  able  to 
forecast  what  he  will  do  in  the  future. 

Fifty  years  ago,  according  to  the  best  evidence  obtainable, 
physical  and  mental  diseases  were  rare  in  the  negro  race.  While 
it  is  doubtless  necessary  to  proceed  with  caution  and  to  take 
with  a  large  grain  of  salt  the  opinions  of  many  who  would  have 
us  believe  that  just  before  the  war  the  negroes  were  physically 
perfect,  owing  to  the  influence  of  a  rigid  selection,  a  sifting  of 
the  evidence  will  disclose  that  the  black  man  of  those  days  was 
vastly  better  off  physically  than  he  is  now.  And  while  he  was 
mentally  perhaps  "a  child  of  nature  still,"  what  thoughts  he 
nad  were  healthy,  and  what  knowledge  he  possessed  was  not 
that  gained  in  or  filtered  from  the  city  slums. 

In  1864  there  were  practically  no  negro  insane;  such  cases 
as  did  exist  were  due  either  to  congenital  accidents,  which  pro 
duced  idiots  or  imbeciles,  or  were  cases  of  mania  and  melan- 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  77 

cholia  and  the  like,  due  to  bodily  or  unfavorable  environmental 
causes  acting  on  the  individual.  Physicians  of  that  time  are 
almost  unanimous  in  the  opinion  that  the  so-called  "degenera 
tive"  types  of  insanity,  such  as  the  dementia  of  the  young  (de 
mentia  praecox),  paranoia,  manic-depressive  insanity  and  the 
like,  were  almost  unknown.  We  must  allow  for  errors  of  diag 
nosis  on  the  part  of  these  elder  physicians.  But  when  we  have 
made  every  concession  demanded  by  our  caution,  we  are  ob 
liged  to  conclude  that  these  degenerative  types  of  mental  di 
sease  were  excessively  rare. 

Tuberculosis,  which  today  is  almost  a  synonym  of  the  word 
"negro,"  was  not  regarded  fifty  years  ago  as  a  particular  scourge 
of  the  race.  In  the  city  of  Charleston,  for  instance,  in  the  year 
1860  the  death  rate  per  thousand  from  tuberculosis  was  about 
the  same  for  whites  and  negroes.  Ten  years  earlier,  in  1850, 
the  negro  had  a  little  the  better  of  it,  his  rate  being  appreciably 
lower.  Today,  in  the  same  city,  and  in  this  time  of  sanitary 
precautions,  the  story  is  vastly  different,  for  the  rate  in  the  ne 
groes  is  about  200%,  in  excess  of  that  in  the  whites. 

In  the  same  way,  alcoholism,  drug  habits,  and  the  grave  di 
seases  due  to  vice  were  relatively  uncommon  among  the  blacks. 
I  might  prolong  the  list  indefinitely,  but  the  result  would  be  the 
same.  We  may  assume,  then,  that  when  the  negro  ceased  to 
be  a  slave  and  became  a  freeman  dependent  upon  his  own  re 
sources  and  guided  solely  by  his  own  caprice,  he  was,  as  a  peo 
ple,  unusually  sound  physically  and  mentally. 

What  is  his  condition  today?  The  facts  I  brought  forward 
in  the  beginning  are  the  answer.  In  fifty  years — which,  I  can 
not  state  too  emphatically,  is  an  exceedingly  short  time  in  the 
history  of  a  race — in  fifty  years,  he  has  deteriorated  mentally 
and  physically  until  he  has  become  not  only  worthy  of  our  cu 
riosity  as  students,  but  also  of  our  profoundest  pity.  In  the 
presence  of  such  facts  as  these,  it  is  certainly  permissible  to 
ask:  what  will  the  negro  do  in  the  coming  half-century,  if  we 
are  to  judge  by  the  past  fifty  years?  I  have  neither  the  knowl 
edge  nor  the  time  to  go  into  the  causes  of  this  degeneracy,  and 
attempt  to  get  from  them  information  which  will  help  in  mak 
ing  a  tentative  forecast.  But  I  believe  I  am  perfectly  safe  in 


78  PHELPS-STOKKS   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

saying  that,  for  the  most  part,  these  causes — certainly  the  most 
powerful  of  them,  at  least — are  operating  today  with  undimin- 
ished  force  and  will  continue  to  operate  for  some  time  to  come. 
In  addition,  there  is  beginning  to  assert  itself  one  other  factor 
which  has  only  recently  appeared  in  the  negroes  of  this  coun 
try,  and  which  will  serve  to  increase  the  probability  that  he  will 
continue  to  degenerate  as  rapidly,  if  not  more  rapidly,  in  the 
future  as  in  the  past.  I  mean,  the  factor  of  heredity. 

In  the  beginning,  I  referred  to  the  diseases  we  have  so  far 
been  considering  as  "diseases  producing  racial  degeneracy;"  I 
did  so  because  these  diseases  are  the  ones  most  likely  to  have 
an  effect  upon  succeeding  generations.  Anyone  suffering  with 
one  of  these  diseases  will,  if  he  have  children,  very  likely  have 
defective  children,  children  who  will  ultimately  have  to  be  cared 
for  in  some  manner  by  the  state.  Every  physician  knows  full 
well  the  effect  of  syphilis  in  the  parents  upon  succeeding  gen 
erations.  Anyone  who  uses  a  little  discrimination  in  his  observa 
tions  can  see  in  the  negroes  of  today  the  hereditary  effect  of 
this  disease.  That  tuberculosis  is  hereditary — in  the  sense  that 
a  tendency  to  the  disease  may  be  transmitted — is  rapidly  being 
strengthened  by  daily  observation  and  study.  As  far  as  the  ne 
gro  is  concerned,  hereditary  predisposition  is  the  only  thing 
which  will  account  for  his  increasing  susceptibility  to  the  dis 
ease  ;  while  he  is  probably  racially  susceptible  to  a  greater  de 
gree  than  the  white  man,  several  investigators  have  shown  that 
environment  does  not  play  a  very  important  role  in  causing  the 
disease  in  the  race;  if  we  base  our  study  solely  upon  this  racial 
susceptibility,  we  would  be  compelled  to  give  the  factor  of  en 
vironment  a  large  role.  But  all  classes  of  negroes,  no  matter 
where  they  are  nor  how  they  live,  suffer  from  and  die  from  this 
disease  in  numbers  all  out  of  proportion  to  what  we  would  ex 
pect  if  we  judged  solely  from  racial  susceptibility  plus  environ 
ment.  Heredity  must  be  playing  a  large  part  in  causing  the 
increase  of  this  affection  among  the  negroes.  In  regard  to  in 
sanity,  it  is  practically  certain  that  heredity  is  beginning  to  as 
sert  itself  powerfully.  In  recent  years,  there  have  been  several 
families  of  negroes  which  have  become  established  institutions 
at  the  Central  State  Hospital,  in  Petersburg;  the  staff  there  re- 


THE   NKGRO  IN   THE}   SOUTH  79 

gards  it  as  unusual  when  some  one  of  these  families  is  not  rep 
resented  on  the  hospital  books.  The  same  is  true  of  practically 
every  other  hospital  for  negro  insane.  Last  summer,  I  collected 
a  number  of  family  histories  which,  though  they  are  imperfect, 
indicate  to  my  mind  that  the  disease  is  becoming  hereditary  and 
is  rapidly  spreading  as  a  hereditary  disease  among  the  negroes. 
The  hereditary  influence  of  alcohol  and  cocaine  is  too  well 
known  for  me  to  pause  upon  it  here.  In  brief,  the  negroes  are 
being  attacked  in  large  and  increasing  numbers  by  the  diseases 
I  have  named,  which,  on  account  of  their  tendency  to  modify 
succeeding  generations,  are  extremely  likely  to  cause  the  de 
terioration  of  the  race.  Each  generation  of  negroes  will  con 
tain  many  more  defectives  than  the  preceding;  Dr.  Nolan 
Stewart,  of  Mississippi,  asserts  that  the  number  of  negro  insane 
almost  doubles  every  ten  years.  The  burden  of  the  support 
of  these  defectives  will  grow  heavier  every  year.  Just  how 
much  heavier,  and  just  \vhat  the  ultimate  result  will  be  in  terms 
of  dollars  or  in  terms  of  human  life  and  suffering,  we  can  but 
speculate. 

Such,  then,  are  the  aspects  of  the  Negro's  relation  to  public 
health  which  are  of  most  importance  to  the  state.  Let  us  now 
consider  for  a  moment  the  second  part  of  the  problem — the  Ne 
gro's  relation  to  us  as  individuals. 

Statistics  go  to  prove  that  the  negro  is  about  as  susceptible 
to  the  ordinary  infectious  diseases  as  the  white  man ;  he  is  more 
susceptible  to  tuberculosis  and  other  diseases  of  the  respiratory 
tract ;  he  suffers  from  typhoid,  scarlet  fever,  diphtheria  and  so 
forth  to  about  the  same  extent  as  the  whites.  The  only  diseases 
to  which  he  seems  relatively  immune  are  malaria  and — as  has 
only  recently  been  shown — hook-worm.  Everything  else  being 
equal,  statistics  show  that  there  is  about  the  same  amount  of 
acute  infectious  diseases  in  the  two  races. 

If  everybody  in  the  South  were  white,  such  a  condition  would 
not  be  particularly  worthy  of  remark.  If  everyone  were  white, 
it  would  be  relatively  easy  to  enforce  health  laws  and  sanitary 
regulations ;  it  would  be  relatively  easy  to  teach  the  people  the 
principles  of  personal  hygiene.  But  everybody  is  not  white.  A 
large  part  of  our  population  is  made  up  of  the  members  of  a 


80  PHELPS-STOKKS   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

race  which,  as  I  have  suggested  before,  is  very  little  amenable 
to  law  and  instruction.  The  negro  is  proverbially  a  happy-go- 
lucky  sort  of  creature.  It  is,  furthermore,  very  hard  to  induce 
him  to  sacrifice  his  own  interests  for  the  benefit  of  others.  And 
he  has  seldom  shown  evidences  of  any  feeling  of  responsibility 
toward  the  community  in  which  he  lives. 

It  is  this  lack  of  responsibility,  this  indifference  to  the  wel 
fare  of  others,  which  makes  the  negro  when  diseased  a  positive 
menace  to  others.  All  of  us  who  reside  in  the  South  know  the 
negroes  and  know  how  they  live.  We  are  only  too  familiar  with 
the  rude  cabin  in  the  country  and  the  hovel  in  the  town.  We 
are  associated  with  the  negroes  in  all  sorts  of  ways — on  the 
streets,  on  the  street-cars,  in  our  homes.  Negroes  cook  our 
food,  launder  our  clothing,  nurse  our  children ;  they  come  into 
intimate  contact  with  us  everywhere.  How  many  of  us  appre 
ciate  the  significance  of  this  when  we  come  to  consider  ques 
tions  of  public  health?  The  negro,  in  his  home,  has  no  idea  of 
sanitation;  in  his  person,  he  usually  has  no  idea  of  personal  hy 
giene.  When  he  is  ill,  he  does  not  often  realize  that  he  is  a 
menace  to  others ;  or,  if  he  does  happen  to  know  it,  he  does  not 
often  care  whether  he  is  or  not.  He  is,  as  a  rule,  totally  indif 
ferent.  And,  furthermore,  the  very  nature  of  his  economic  po 
sition  forces  him  to  disregard  the  precautions  which  should  be 
adopted  by  persons  suffering  with  infectious  diseases.  When  a 
white  man  gets  tuberculosis,  he  is  often  able  to  stop  work  alto 
gether,  or  if  this  is  not  possible,  he  at  least  is  likely  to  command 
resources  enough  to  enable  him  to  secure  medical  advice,  which 
will  teach  him  first  of  all  how  to  reduce  the  menace  of  his  dis 
ease.  The  tuberculous  negro  very  rarely  does  either  of  these ; 
as  a  rule,  he  has  to  work,  or  starve.  And  he  seldom  seeks  med 
ical  advice  until  his  disease  is  far  advanced;  he  has  had,  mean 
while,  unlimited  opportunity  to  infect  others,  and  probably  has 
done  so.  The  negro  woman  with  sick  children  has  to  work,  or 
her  family  will  suffer.  The  usual  income  earned  by  negroes 
makes  it  practically  impossible,  granting  that  they  might  have 
the  inclination,  for  them  to  make  their  dwellings  sanitary,  and 
themselves  cleanly  and  careful. 

Ignorance  of  the  nature  of  the  infectious  diseases,  careless- 


THE   NKGRO  IN   THE)   SOUTH  81 

ness  in  regard  to  the  consequences  of  such  infections  to  them 
selves  and  to  others,  a  reluctance  or  an  indifference  to  medical 
treatment,  and  an  economic  position  which  forces  them  all,  sick 
or  well,  to  work  as  long  as  they  are  able,  are  the  factors  in  the 
public  health  aspect  of  race  relationships  in  the  South  which 
most  intimately  concern  us.  Any  family  in  the  South  is  likely 
to  have  a  tuberculous  cook,  or  a  cook  whose  husband  has  ty 
phoid  fever;  such  a  cook  is  very  likely,  and  in  all  innocence,  to 
mix  tubercle  or  typhoid  bacilli  with  the  salad.  The  housegirl 
is  very  often  infected  with  venereal  disease,  and  the  nursemaid 
may  be  feebleminded — which  will  lead  to  her  giving  the  baby 
attention,  the  character  of  which  I  will  leave  to  your  imagina 
tion.  Such  a  household  as  this  is  by  no  means  fanciful.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  evident  to  all  who  study  the  question  that 
such  conditions  occur  to  a  painfully  alarming  extent.  To  give 
you  an  idea  of  how  careless  and  indifferent  the  negroes  are  in 
respect  of  these  infectious  diseases,  I  might  tell  you  of  an  inci 
dent  which  recently  came  to  my  notice.  A  negro  washerwoman, 
on  coming  for  the  clothes  at  the  first  of  the  week,  was  told  by 
her  employer  that  she  had  better  not  do  the  family  wash  that 
week.  "Why  not?"  she  asked.  "Well,"  replied  the  lady  of  the 
house,  "I  thought  you  wouldn't  want  to  do  it,  because  some  of 
my  children  have  scarlet  fever."  "Lawd,  Miss,"  exclaimed  the 
washerwoman,  "I  don't  mind  dat  none.  Why,  my  own  chillun 
has  jest  got  over  de  scarlet  fever  demselves ;  but  dat  ain't  stop 
me  from  washin'  yo'  clothes." 

This  is  typical  of  a  thousand  similar  incidents  throughout  the 
South,  and  you  can  readily  see  the  menace  in  such  a  situation. 
Infectious  diseases  among  the  negroes  are  perpetually  danger 
ous  to  the  white  people.  A  well  known  physician,  has  aptly  ex 
pressed  the  situation  when  he  said:  "The  Negro  is  for  the 
South  a  perpetual  reservoir  of  infectious  diseases." 

It  is  true,  on  the  other  hand,  that  by  reason  of  efficient  health 
departments,  and  a  well  developed  sanitary  conscience  among 
the  whites,  the  negro  has  never  yet  been  able  to  work  any  se 
rious  and  wide-spread  ill  to  the  general  population.  It  is  not 
likely  that  any  epidemics  originating  among  the  negroes  will 
ever  devastate  our  cities.  Of  course,  if  such  diseases  as  bu- 


82  PHEIvPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

bonic  plague  or  Asiatic  cholera  ever  gained  entrance  into  this 
country,  and  got  a  good  start  in  our  black  belt,  no  man  can 
say  what  would  happen.  But  such  things  are  not  likely  to  hap 
pen.  We  are  too  well  guarded  by  our  health  officers  for  that. 
But  it  is  true  that  a  great  amount  of  individual  illness  can  be 
traced  to  the  negro — isolated  cases  of  infection,  due  to  the  ne 
gro's  carelessness  and  ignorance.  This  is  particularly  true  of 
insect-borne  diseases,  particularly  those  carried  by  household 
insects.  As  individuals,  we  are  most  certainly  menaced  by  the 
negro. 

The  worst  of  it  is  that  we  are  so  endangered  largely  through 
our  own  carelessness  and  indifference.  We  are  doing  almost 
nothing  to  protect  ourselves.  We  raise  a  great  hue  and  cry 
about  small-pox  and  fail  to  notice  pneumonia.  We  spend  great 
sums  on  fighting  tuberculosis  among  the  white  people,  but  not 
enough  to  stop  its  source  among  the  negroes.  As  far  as  I  can 
ascertain,  Virginia  and  North  Carolina  are  the  only  southern 
states  in  which  there  is  any  great  effort  being  made  to  educate 
the  negro  about  tuberculosis.  Nowhere  in  the  South,  except  for 
a  few  sporadic  and  unscientific  attempts  among  the  negroes  them- 
selves,  is  there  any  attempt  being  made  to  reduce  venereal  dis 
ease.  And  as  for  insanity  and  allied  affections,  absolutely  noth 
ing  is  being  done  by  way  of  prevention.  Indeed,  one  is  some 
times  tempted  to  think  that  something  is  being  done  by  way  of 
increasing  it.  We  white  people,  upon  whom  the  burden  of  gov 
ernment  rests,  are  in  the  end  responsible  for  the  great  amount 
of  disease  among  the  negroes;  and  are  indirectly  responsible, 
likewise,  for  the  harm  such  disease  is  doing  us;  if  we  were 
really  to  bestir  ourselves,  we  could  better  matters  in  a  short 
while. 

In  the  foregoing  analysis,  I  have  tried  to  state  some  of  the 
more  important  and  obvious  facts  in  regard  to  the  relation  of 
the  negro  to  our  public  health.  With  these  facts  in  hand,  it  will 
be  easy  for  me  to  indicate  to  you  a  few  important  considerations 
which  we  will — someday — have  to  face.  I  shall  attempt  to  draw 
no  conclusions;  I  shall  merely  state  the  problem  as  it  appears 
to  me,  and  leave  it  with  you  for  your  reflection. 

The  first  consideration  is :     "What  is  to  be  the  relation  of  the 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  83 

Negro  to  the  health  problem  viewed  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  state?"  We  have  seen  that  the  race  is  showing  a  marked 
degeneracy ;  we  have  seen  how  such  degeneracy  is  the  seed  of 
its  own  increase.  The  cost  to  the  state  in  caring  for  these  de 
generates  is  already  an  enormous  sum.  We  should  remember, 
when  we  think  about  this  sum,  that  we  white  people  have  our 
own  problems  to  face.  Degeneracy  is  on  the  increase  among 
us,  too ;  we  have  our  own  sick  to  care  for  and  support.  We  have, 
on  our  own  part,  an  immense  burden  to  bear.  Do  you  not  think  it 
timely  and  pertinent  to  inquire :  Will  the  white  people  of  the 
South  be  able  to  solve — will  they  even  have  resources  to  attack — 
their  own  problems  of  public  health  if  at  the  same  time  they 
are  obliged  to  support  a  horde  of  defective  negroes,  the  produc 
tion  of  which  they  are  doing  nothing  to  lessen?  Does  not  this 
seem  a  good  place  to  apply  an  ounce  of  prevention? 

In  the  second  place :  "What  of  the  negro's  relation  to  us  as 
individuals?"  How  many  white  people  have  got  tuberculosis  and 
typhoid  and  other  infectious  diseases  from  the  negroes?  How 
many  will  acquire  such  diseases  during  the  next  year?  We  have 
the  negro  among  us,  and  will  continue  to  have  him;  we  shall 
have  to  associate  with  him  daily.  Does  it  not  seem  high  time 
to  begin  teaching  him  something  about  infectious  diseases? 

I  leave  these  two  questions  to  you  for  your  reflection.  And 
in  conclusion,  I  venture  to  hope  that  you  will  not  stop  with 
thinking  and  reflecting — that  your  consideration  of  this  great 
problem  will  issue  in  practical  results.  I  say  this  not  merely 
because  I  believe  the  white  people  in  the  South  are  being  in 
jured  by  their  indifference  toward  disease  among  the  negro,  but 
also  because  of  sympathy  for  the  negro  himself.  The  amount 
of  suffering  among  these  people  is  distressing  to  any  right 
minded  person.  Do  not  we  white  people,  who  are  more  or  less 
responsible  for  the  negro's  destiny,  owe  it  to  him  to  protect  him 
against  himself? 


Thinking    White    about    the    Negro    in    the    South. 


BY  JOHN  £.  WHITE. 


As  a  man  thinketh,  so  is  he;  as  a  people  think,  so  are  they, 
and  so  is  their  civilization.  The  Southern  white  people  have  thought 
more  about  the  negro  than  about  any  other  subject  of  public 
concern.  He  is  the  unavoidable  big  fact  and  the  obtrusive  big 
issue,  from  which  there  is  no  escape.  During  the  past  fifty 
years,  we  have  thought  about  the  negro,  if  you  will  allow  me, 
sometimes  red  and  sometimes  blue,  alternating  from  resentment 
to  pessimism.  Now,  the  presence  of  ten  millions  in  the  South 
is  something  to  think  about.  That  we  have  been  and  are  in 
fluenced  in  character  by  our  thought  about  it  and  our  dealing 
with  it,  is  inevitable.  To  contribute  even  in  a  small  way  to  right 
thinking  and  right  dealing  about  the  negro  in  the  South  is  the 
most  useful  patriotism  open  to  a  Southern  man. 

By  "Thinking  White  about  the  Negro,"  I  do  not  mean  pri 
marily  to  exalt  the  ideals  of  altruism  as  our  thought  motive. 
I  do  not  mean  to  press  you  for  sentimental  sympathy.  The  con 
ception  of  "thinking  white  about  the  negro,"  I  propose  is  think 
ing  worthily,  soundly,  constructively  and  in  such  a  way  as  to 
secure  the  profitable  reaction  of  the  white  man's  thoughts  upon 
the  white  man's  civilization.  By  "thinking  white"  I  have  in 
view  our  enlightened  self-interest.  If  it  could  be  that  the  moral 
considerations  of  justice,  and  sympathy  in  our  thinking  about 
the  negro,  do  not  contribute  to  the  welfare  and  strength  of  the 
twenty  million  white  people  in  the  South,  let  them  be  discarded 
for  considerations  more  practical ;  but  if  thinking  helpfully 
and  dealing  hopefully  in  obedience  to  great  principles  is  nec 
essary  for  the  development  and  progress  of  white  men  and  ne 
groes  alike,  my  thesis  is  justified  on  every  ground  of  pragmatism. 

It  is  the  conviction  of  many  Southern  men  that  a  movement 
to  improve  our  front  toward  the  race  problem  is  possible,  and 
that  the  practical  way  to  begin  it  is  to  secure  the  formidable 
assertion  of  the  best  thought  of  the  best  men  in  the  South  with 

84 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  85 

the  purpose  of  gaining  ascendency  over  public  opinion.  This 
conviction  involves  the  confession  that  public  opinion  in  the 
South  on  this  subject  has  not  been  dominated  by  the  best  thought 
of  the  best  men,  but  has  been  controlled  by  incitements,  oftimes 
promoted  by  fears  and  passions.  It  is  a  saying  of  Samuel  But 
ler's  that  "the  history  of  the  world  is  the  record  of  the  weak 
ness,  frailty  and  death  of  public  opinion.''  In  this  country,  pub 
lic  opinion  never  dies,  but  it  is  very  much  exposed  to  weakness 
and  frailty.  Public  opinion  in  the  South  about  the  negro  has 
been  much  abandoned  to  influences  of  indifference  and  repres 
sion.  It  has  reflected  our  fears  oftener  than  our  force.  A  bet 
ter  thought  and  a  better  courage  has  existed  all  the  time,  but 
submerged  in  reticence  and  restraint.  Men  of  light  and  lead 
ing,  bold  enough  otherwise  have  on  this  subject  held  aloof  from 
their  obligation  to  public  opinion.  The  church  and  the  pulpit 
have  been  silent  for  the  most  part;  the  school  and  the  teacher 
singularly  reserved.  The  editors  and  the  politicians  have  had 
the  field.  If  the  South  has  not  done  very  well  with  its  prob 
lem,  it  is  probably  because  our  educators,  preachers  and  intelli 
gent  business  men  have  not  come  to  the  assistance  of  the  editors 
and  politicians.  The  immediate  task  therefore  confronting  any 
movement  to  create  a  current  of  constructive  public  opinion  on 
the  race  problem  is  to  get  the  best  minds  together,  the  best 
thought  into  resolution,  and  the  cooperation  of  the  best  men 
in  a  program  that  will  draw  public  sentiment  to  its  support. 
In  practically  every  Southern  community  there  is  private  con 
science  and  wisdom  quite  sufficient  to  determine  its  public  senti 
ment  if  it  were  organized  and  applied  purposely  to  that  end. 

In  1896  a  demonstration  of  this  fact  was  made  in  Atlanta,  Ga. 
A  Civic  League  was  organized,  which  appealed  to  the  best  men, 
white  and  black,  to  get  together.  When  it  was  known  that  a 
score  of  leading  citizens  were  behind  the  movement,  the  wall  of 
hesitation  crumbled.  In  a  little  while  three  thousand  white  men 
had  signed  up  with  the  League  and  public  opinion  was  practi 
cally  solid  in  favor  of  law  and  order  and  against  unfriendly  at 
titudes  toward  the  negro.  The  significant  effect  was  that  the 
best  negroes  immediately  organized  their  league.  For  nearly 
ten  years  the  influence  of  the  movement  has  controlled  the  pub- 


86  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

lie  sentiment  of  Atlanta.  The  white  people  demonstrated  their 
power  to  improve  the  relations  of  the  races  to  the  advantage  of 
both.  This  is  a  genuine  white  supremacy,  this  is  what  I  mean 
by  "thinking  white,"  this  is  the  sort  of  movement  to  lead  out 
of  the  prevailing  irresolution  in  the  South  toward  the  problem 
of  the  races.  The  first  step  of  it  is  to  elicit  the  courageous  ex 
pression  of  our  best  judgments,  then  to  combine  these  influences 
and  direct  them  upon  public  opinion.  The  best  service  the  South 
can  render  the  nation  will  be  such  a  movement  reassuring  it 
that  the  Southern  people  may  be  relied  on  to  deal  with  the 
problem  progressively  about  which  there  is  more  or  less  doubt 
at  the  present  time. 

It  appears  to  many  that  conditions  in  the  South  were  never 
so  favorable  for  such  a  movement  as  now. 

(1)  Sectional  feeling  is  at  its  lowest  ebb  in  the  South.     The 
presidency   of   Woodrow   Wilson  and  the  return  of  the   South 
to  national  leadership  is  reducing  sectionalism  to  the  expiring 
point.     We  are  back  in  the  "house  of  our  fathers."     Our  sense 
of   national   responsibility   is   pervasive.      The   Southern   people 
are  on  their  mettle  to  prove  themselves  before  the  world.     To 
establish  the  contention  that  we  are  able  to  deal  with  the  negro 
more  successfully  than  any  other  section  of  the  country  is  doing, 
is  an  achievement  that  appeals  to  the  deepest  self-respect  of  the 
South.     This  is  sectionalism  worth  while. 

(2)  We  are  practically  settled  down  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  negro  is  a  permanency  in  the  South.  For  several  years  noth 
ing  has  been  heard  of  colonization  or  wholesale  segregation.    The 
European  war  reviving  the  impulse  of  immigration  from  foreign 
lands  is  tending  to  arouse  the  South's  appreciation  of  the  negro 
rather  than  diminish  it.     There  is  no  real  desire  in  the  South 
to  exchange  him  for  European  importations.     In  every  farmers' 
club  and  laborers'   organization,  when  the  test  is  made,  a   fa 
vorable  judgment  for  the  negro  in  the  South  is  registered. 

(3)  The  irritations  of  race  contacts  have  been  generally  re 
duced   throughout    the    South.     The    prohibition    of    the   liquor 
traffic  has  wrought  a  great  result  in  this  direction.     The  crime 
of  rape  and  the  accusations  of  rape  have    greatly    diminished. 
Seventy  per  cent,  of  the  lynchings  last  year  involved  no  charge 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE)   SOUTH  87 

of  outrage  upon  womanhood.  The  irritation  of  the  negro's  par 
ticipation  in  politics  has  practically  disappeared.  The  disfran- 
chisement  laws  have  greatly  contributed  to  allay  the  perils  of 
race  conflict.  It  is  worth  noting  that  the  negroes  are  in  much 
the  same  status  in  the  Southern  States  they  would  have  been 
had  they  never  been  enfranchised.  The  South  may  therefore 
consider  it  possible  to  deal  with  them  as  the  South  would  have 
dealt  with  them  had  the  reconstruction  era  been  left  out  of  our 
history.  There  is  an  important  little  book  in  the  library  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Georgia,  which  indicates  that  the  Confed 
erate  Soldiers  returning  from  Appomattox  were  thinking  "white 
about  the  negro."  This  little  volume  is  entitled  "Acts  of  1865 
and  1866 — Laws  Governing  Persons  of  Color."  On  page  239 
are  three  sections  of  laws  which  illustrate  what  the  white  people 
of  Georgia  considered  as  their  true  attitude  toward  people  in 
their  midst  who  could  not  vote  nor  legislate  for  themselves. 
Simple,  clear,  kind,  conceived  in  moral  conscience,  these  laws 
provided  a  definite  status  and  threw  wide  open  the  doors  of  op 
portunity  for  the  negroes  now  no  longer  slaves,  and  yet  not  en 
franchised,  to  make  progress  guaranteed  by  law.  The  South 
is  in  position  to  forget  the  resentments  aroused  by  Reconstruc 
tion,  for  which  the  negroes  were  scarcely  responsible,  since  their 
present  civic  status  is  practically  what  it  would  have  been  if  the 
Fifteenth  Amendment  had  not  been  passed. 

(4)  Negro  education  is  now  turned  mainly  in  the  direction 
approved  by  the  common  sense  of  the  South.     The  higher  edu 
cation  of  negroes  has  undergone  modification  in  ideals  and  in 
reality.     Our  public  schools  more  and  more  direct  the  negroes' 
thought    toward    industrial    efficiency.     It    is    indisputable    that 
Hampton   and   Tuskegee   have   wrought  marked   change   in   the 
motive  and  method  of  negro  education  and  in  the  popular  at 
titude  toward  it  in  the  South. 

(5)  Another  factor  making  way  for  a  high-minded  policy  on 
the  part  of  Southern  white  people  in  determining  their  dealing 
with  the  negro  is  the  consciousness  known  as  world-conscious 
ness.    We  are  living  in  the  open ;  the  sense  of  isolation,  of  de 
tachment,  and  of  retirement  below  the  Mason  and  Dixon  line, 
has  been  surrendered.     We  are  consciously  responsible  to  hu- 


88  PHEIyPS-STOKKS   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

manity  for  what  we  do.  Constraint  and  restraint  fall  out  of  the 
world's  eyes  looking  upon  us.  We  are  not  independent  of  it, 
dare  not  defy  it,  and  do  not  desire  to  do  so.  This  fact  is  urging 
in  the  direction  of  something  with  respect  to  the  negro  that  will 
stand  in  the  judgment  of  history.  The  South  is  encouraged  to 
proceed  in  a  course  approved  by  mankind.  Any  other  course 
exposes  us  to  intolerable  moral  and  financial  penalties. 

I  have  spoken  of  "The  Best  Thought  of  the  Best  People"  as 
something  to  be  formulated  definitely  and  launched  into  the 
current  of  Southern  opinion.  It  is  incumbent  upon  me  there 
fore  to  state  what  I  believe  to  be  the  best  thought  of  the  best 
people  about  the  negro  and  his  relation  to  the  South.  Something 
would  be  gained  immediately  if  every  intelligent  white  man 
would  task  himself  to  put  in  order  the  convictions  he  desires  him 
self  and  others  to  abide  by  on  this  subject.  What  I  submit  is 
what  I  believe  could  become  the  creed  of  Southern  white  men 
and  suggest  the  basis  of  understanding  and  a  program  of  progress 
with  the  race  problem. 

First:  The  Anglo-Saxon  people  of  the  South  are  providen 
tially  ordained  and  charged  with  supremacy  in  Southern  civil 
ization.  Accepting  this  distinction,  we  should  accept  its  obli 
gation.  The  white  people  do  dominate  and  direct  civilization 
in  the  South.  It  is  a  simple  fact.  Their  numerical  superiority 
is  three  to  one,  and  the  rate  of  increase  is  constantly  increasing 
their  proportion  of  numerical  advantage.  Financially,  the  white 
people  hold  firmly  the  properties,  control  the  channels  of  com 
merce  and  finance,  manage  the  industries,  and  dictate  the  terms 
of  general  business.  In  education,  the  white  people  occupy  an 
unchallengeable  advantage  of  privilege  and  opportunity.  Ten 
dollars  to  one,  is  the  ratio  of  money  expended  in  the  South  for 
the  white  man  as  compared  with  the  negro.  Politically,  the 
white  people  exercise  uncompeted  power.  Surely  the  conclu 
sion  should  be  considered  final  against  any  possible  question  of 
the  secure  position  of  the  white  people.  The  ten  million  negroes 
considered  as  a  population  are  incomparably  disadvantaged  in 
comparison.  Where  then  is  the  room  for  the  white  man  to  doubt 
himself  ?  The  only  shadow  of  question  deserving  a  moment's 
anxiety  is  the  disposition  to  base  our  supremacy  upon  discrim- 


THE   NKGRO  IN    THE}   SOUTH  89 

mations  of  an  artificial  character.  It  sets  loose  the  question  at 
once  whenever  the  white  people  seem  willing  to  assume  the  at 
titude  of  "infant  industries,"  unable  to  survive  without  the  spe 
cial  favors  of  legislation  for  their  protection.  The  only  reliable 
basis  for  the  ascendency  of  any  man  or  people  in  this  world  is 
quality.  The  fear  begotten  in  Reconstruction  days  is  utterly  un 
justified  now.  The  South  is  the  white  man's  country.  Let  him 
accept  responsibility  for  it  and  hold  it  in  his  merit  and  deserving 
and  meet  competition  like  a  white  man  without  whining.  This  is 
noble  Anglo-Saxonism.  This  is  the  white  man  "thinking  white" 
about  himself  and  about  the  negro  too. 

Second:  The  negro  is  a  man.  This  thought  in  its  full  mean 
ing  is  required  of  the  South.  He  is  not  half  a  man,  half  beast, 
but  a  man  made  in  the  image  of  God.  He  is  not  a  negro  first 
and  a  man  afterwards — a  may  be  man,  but  a  man  first — a  human 
being  first  of  all.  The  South  can  deal  with  him  soundly  only 
on  this  basis,  that  he  is  to  be  thought  of  in  the  terms  of  human 
ity.  He  is  an  inferior  man,  a  terribly  backward  man,  but  a  man 
for  all  that.  Intelligent  people  of  course  know  that  the  an 
cestral  tree  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  roots  in  an  ancient  heathenism. 
Slavery  is  not  a  stigma  peculiar  to  the  negro  race,  nor  is  Africa 
the  only  darkness,  out  of  which  men  have  been  drawn  to  higher 
levels.  It  is  not  the  best  thought  in  the  South  that  forgets  the 
fact  that  the  negro  is  a  man.  If  perforce  our  civilization  must 
deal  with  him,  it  is  good  that  we  are  dealing  with  human  ma 
terial.  I  do  not  mean  that  there  is  any  serious  dispute  of  the 
humanity  of  the  negro  among  intelligent  people,  but  it  would 
have  a  wholesome  effect  upon  the  unintelligent  if  the  South's 
creed  of  the  negro  should  set  it  down  as  a  fundamental  of  our 
understanding  of  him  that  he  is  a  man. 

Third:  The  negro  is  a  Southern  man.  Asserting  this,  we 
have  to  acknowledge  that  the  term  of  description  is  not  familiar 
to  our  thought,  but  reflection  demands  that  it  stand.  The  negro 
race  related  to  the  South  is  the  historical  identity  of  the  Amer 
ican  negro.  It  is  inextricably  bound  up  with  the  South.  Side 
by  side  with  what  we  have  done  for  the  negroes,  a  great  deal 
is  to  be  said  about  what  the  negroes  have  meant  to  our  peculiar 
Southern  life.  I  do  not  refer  now  particularly  to  the  negro's 


90  PHELPS-STOKKS   FELLOWSHIP   PAPERS 

labor  in  slavery,  which  enriched  the  South  before  the  war,  or 
to  his  contribution  to  industrial  wealth  as  a  working  man  since 
the  war.  The  introduction  of  the  negro  into  Southern  life  con 
ditioned  from  the  beginning  the  tone  and  shape  of  the  peculiar 
civilization  of  the  Ante-bellum  period.  We  speak  of  it  as  a 
feudal  civilization.  We  cherish  it  sentimentally  as  a  rare  and 
beautiful  civilization.  We  preserve  its  records  as  a  glory  for 
future  generations  to  contemplate.  What  made  that  civilization 
peculiar?  It  was  the  negro.  Unconsciously  enough,  he  was  the 
patient  inner  mold,  about  which  the  habits  and  customs  and 
courtesies  and  chivalries  and  leisures  and  hospitalities  and  ten 
dernesses  and  lovely  women  and  knightly  men  were  fashioned. 
There  is  nothing  we  like  to  remember  about  the  Old  South  that 
does  not  include  the  old  negro.  Less  attractively,  to  be  sure, 
but  not  less  really,  the  negro's  labor  on  the  farms  and  in  the 
households  of  today  is  the  differential  of  the  New  South.  There 
are  no  plans  for  our  future  as  a  people  that  do  not  involve  the 
negro. 

Edgar  Gardner  Murphy  struck  out  a  convincing  phrase  when 
he  described  the  South  as  "the  indivisible  inheritance."  "We 
can  no  more  make,"  he  says,  "a  bi-racial  division  of  our  civ 
ilization  than  we  can  make  a  bi-racial  division  of  the  sunshine, 
the  rain,  the  returning  seasons.  It  is  the  fate  of  the  land.  If 
there  be  freedom  of  the  press,  if  there  be  a  press  fit  or  unfit 
to  be  free;  if  there  be  a  vital  and  spiritual  religion;  if  there  be 
books,  artists,  poets ;  if  there  be  an  historic  and  responsive  lan 
guage;  if  there  be  stable  banks,  equitable  markets,  courts  ac 
cessible  and  for  the  most  part  just;  physicians,  hospitals — and, 
by  no  means  least — the  kindly  interest  of  the  wisest  and  kindliest 
of  a  more  highly  developed  population, — these  are  the  negro's. 
In  so  far  as  they  are  ours,  they  are  his;  in  so  far  as  they  are 
not  his,  they  tend,  in  subtle,  inexorable  fashions  not  to  be  our 
own." 

The  negro  feels  himself  to  be  a  Southern  man.  His  fibre  is 
knit  in  a  Southern  texture.  He  has  proven  his  loyalty  to  the 
South.  There  was  never  an  hour  before  the  war,  when  be 
tween  slavery  and  leaving  the  Southland,  the  negro  heart  would 
have  hesitated  in  its  choice.  Something  must  explain  the  his- 


THE  NEGRO  IN  THE)  SOUTH  91 

toric  fidelity  of  the  negroes  during  the  Civil  War,  when  their 
masters  were  here  in  Virginia  fighting  for  victories  which  de 
termined  their  estate  as  slaves  or  freemen.  Their  ignorance 
does  not  explain  it.  It  was  the  South  smitten  into  the  negro's 
heart  and  the  Southern  white  people  felt  as  his  people  that 
kept  him  true  and  made  him  trustworthy.  He  was  where  his 
soul  told  him  God  wanted  him  to  be.  The  negro  is  a  Southerner. 

Fourth:  The  negro  is  a  black  man.  To  affirm  this  sounds 
commonplace,  but  it  is  in  the  creed  of  the  South.  This  is  not 
to  insist  upon  a  badge  of  inferiority  or  to  shut  a  door  in  the 
negro's  face.  It  is  to  be  insisted  on,  because  it  is  the  pledge  of 
his  best  opportunity  for  progress,  a  necessary  guarantee  of  his 
protection  in  opportunity.  If  the  negro  is  not  a  black  man,  and 
if  he  does  not  remain  a  black  man,  thinking  white  about  the  ne 
gro  is  not  worth  while.  There  is  no  use  in  talking  about  the 
adjustment  of  race  relations  based  upon  an  immorality  that  de 
stroys  racial  honor. 

Gale  Hamilton  said :  "If  God  made  the  white  man  white,  the 
yellow  man  yellow,  and  the  black  man  black,  He  intended  for 
the  white  man  to  remain  white,  and  the  yellow  man  to  remain 
yellow,  and  the  black  man  to  remain  black." 

This  statement  is  not  conclusive  for  argument,  but  it  indicates 
the  basis  upon  which  the  negro's  opportunity  in  the  South  rests. 
Great  nature  signifies  something  final  in  her  definitely  marked 
race  varieties.  The  fact  of  color  is  not  the  force  of  race.  It  is 
but  the  differentiating  symbol  of  a  vital  identity.  Nature  usually 
penalizes  race  amalgamations.  The  data  available  tends  to  prove 
that  deterioration  inheres  in  all  mongrelism.  The  apparent 
mental  superiority  from  the  infusion  of  white  blood  in  the  negro 
is  offset  by  the  reduction  of  physical  virility.  The  true  norm 
of  the  negro's  aspirations  is  race  integrity.  It  provides  an  ad 
equate  stimulus  for  his  energies,  a  definite  direction  for  his  mo 
tive.  About  the  ideal  for  racial  integrity  the  white  people  have 
built  their  progress.  The  race  pride  of  the  Caucasian  has 
spurred  him  forward  sharply  all  through  his  history.  The  ne 
gro  can  build  his  home  and  secure  it  only  in  such  an  enthusiasm. 
The  problem  of  the  mulatto  has  been  the  perplexity  of  the  race 
problem.  It  has  reacted  upon  the  negro  race  injuriously  by  fix- 


92  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

ing  a  false  ideal  before  the  black  man's  face.  The  mulatto  is 
also  the  irritating  indictment  of  the  white  people.  Our  whole 
civilization  has  had  to  pay  a  desperate  price  for  the  sins  of  a 
few.  The  mulatto  challenges  the  sincerity  of  the  white  man's 
resolution  against  social  equality.  He  is  the  living  proof  of  equal 
ity  on  the  level  of  vice.  The  mulatto  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  a 
happy  human  being  in  the  South.  Viewed  from  his  estate  under 
present  conditions,  his  interior  life  is  disconsolate.  Every  mu 
latto  man  is  a  tragedy.  His  is  the  most  anguished  and  most 
helpless  experience  being  suffered  on  this  earth.  For  ninety 
drops,  or  even  a  less  proportion,  of  Anglo-Saxon  blood  feeding 
a  brain  more  than  half  an  Anglo-Saxon  brain  throbbing  in  a 
spirit  charged  with  Anglo-Saxon  pride,  to  be  mixed  with  a  pro 
portion  of  African  blood,  brain  and  spirit,  and  that  scientific 
fact  of  a  nature  at  war  with  itself  and  condemned  to  the  rela 
tions  of  the  negro  in  the  Southern  states,  leaves  no  extreme  of 
tragedy  unrealized.  The  elimination  of  the  mulatto  is  of  course 
dealing  with  a  refractory  human  difficulty  and  must  be  accom 
plished  without  inhumanity.  By  severest  punishment  of  white 
men  guilty  of  invading  the  negro  race  and  making  him  the  ob 
ject  of  severest  social  wrath,  the  South  will  find  a  practical  point 
for  beginning  with  itself  for  the  elimination  of  the  mulatto. 
Then  left  to  the  natural  law  of  reversion  to  type,  the  two  million 
mulattoes  in  the  South,  in  the  view  of  many,  may  enter  upon  a 
process  of  reabsorption  and  finally  disappear.  Within  his  own 
pure  racial  lines  the  negro  can  find  all  the  necessary  aristocracy 
to  aspire  to. 

When  the  best  thought  of  the  South  gets  influential  expres 
sion  along  the  lines  suggested,  our  attitude  toward  the  negro 
will  be  morally  masterful  and  make  a  practical  program  possi 
ble.  We  will  then  be  able  to  consider  him  as  only  a  part  of 
our  problem  of  civilization.  We  will  then  be  able  to  turn  at 
tention  to  its  other  elements  as  they  involve  him  and  he  involves 
them.  It  is  quite  possible  that  the  actual  facts  and  forces  of 
Southern  life  are  not  clearly  understood  either  in  the  South  or 
out  of  it.  Let  me  employ  the  figure  of  a  ladder  for  illustration. 

Thirty  million  people  in  the  Southern  states  are  climbing  on 
one  great  ladder,  which  we  call  our  Civilization.  Ten  million  of 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE}   SOUTH  93 

them  are  well  advanced  toward  the  top.  Ten  million  are  at 
least  safely  civilized.  Ten  million  constitute  the  upper  white 
group  of  intelligence  and  thrift.  They  own  the  property,  direct 
the  politics,  and  determine  the  progress  of  the  South.  Next  be 
low  them  is  a  group  of  isolated  white  people  in  the  mountains 
who  are  fallen  out  of  the  main  current  of  Southern  life.  They 
represent  red  blood  and  new  brain  cells.  They  are  quite  rapidly 
being  drawn  up  into  the  group  above.  The  solution  of  their 
problem  is  outlet  through  contact  upward.  The  evil  that  besets 
them  is  contact  with  the  group  below  them.  When  a  man  comes 
out  of  the  mountains  into  the  larger  world,  he  comes  to  go  up 
at  once  or  go  down  in  civilization. 

The  group  below  the  mountaineers  is  made  up  of  five  or  more 
million  white  people  of  backward  type.  They  are  found  as  ten 
ants  in  rural  sections,  or  along  railway  lines  attached  mainly 
to  the  cotton  mill  industries.  In  broad  fact  they  are  thriftless 
or  thriftlessly  inclined.  Ancestrally  their  record  is  without  in 
spiration.  They  do  not  take  advantage  of  the  public  schools  in 
any  ambitious  way.  Most  of  them  are  content  to  be  tenants  and 
day  workers.  They  occasionally  buy  land,  but  do  not  hold  it 
to  pass  it  on  to  their  children.  They  are  in  constant  competi 
tion  with  the  negro  tenantry.  A  recent  census  bulletin  exhibits 
twenty-seven  counties  in  South  Georgia,  in  which  there  are 
51,033  farm  homes,  and  34,000,  or  nearly  seventy  per  cent,  of 
these  homes  are  occupied  by  tenants.  This  is  typical  of  large 
areas  of  the  South.  Attention  will  discern  here  the  acute  point 
of  race  antagonism. 

The  history  of  the  mass  of  backward  white  people  in  the 
South  has  not  been  explored  sufficiently  for  scientific  statement, 
but  it  is  a  history  and  not  an  accident  that  such  a  mass  does 
exist.  The  early  records  of  settlements  in  the  South  show  that 
with  the  families  of  colonists  came  always  "indentured  servants" 
— that  is  white  people  drawn  from  the  cockney  and  serving 
classes  in  the  old  country.  In  the  new  land  they  did  not  inter 
marry  outside  their  class,  but  soon  became  detached  from  the 
families  with  which  they  had  come  and  began  an  independent 
family  life,  yet  dependent  in  a  social  sense  upon  the  intelligent 
and  thrifty  colonists.  In  spite  of  opportunity,  these  people  could 


94  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

not  shake  off  their  heritage  of  dependence.  During  the  long  pe 
riod  of  African  slavery,  these  white  people  had  an  anomalous 
position  in  the  South.  They  were  connected  with  the  planters 
and  plantations  as  renters,  but  a  negligible  factor  in  the  feudal 
system.  About  every  plantation  before  the  war,  such  families 
are  recalled  distinctly  by  men  now  living, — a  people  thriftlessly 
disposed  and  without  a  stake  in  the  land.  The  negro  slave  was 
held  as  of  more  value  to  the  Planters  than  this  type  of  man  whose 
status  was  economically  uncertain.  The  negroes  themselves  felt 
their  importance  to  their  masters  and  their  position  in  the  feudal 
regime  to  be  superior.  The  war  came,  the  slaves  were  freed,  all 
lines  of  distinction  between  white  men  were  wiped  out,  and  this 
large  element  of  the  white  population  seemed  for  many  years  to 
have  disappeared  as  a  distinct  class. 

But  here  is  what  has  happened.  With  the  recovery  of  South 
ern  agriculture  and  the  increased  value  of  farm  lands,  a  re-inte 
gration  of  the  backward  white  people  has  followed.  The  cotton 
mills  came,  industrial  centers  were  established,  and  the  magnet 
to  draw  these  people  into  communities  was  provided.  This  very 
largely  explains  the  tendency  of  poor  white  people  to  move  away 
from  the  farms.  The  land  lust  was  never  deep  in  their  nature. 

I  have  interviewed  a  number  of  large  land  owners  with  refer 
ence  to  this  section  of  our  Southern  population.  The  testimony 
is  that  the  negro  tenant  is  more  likely  to  buy  a  piece  of  land  and 
hold  to  it  successfully  until  paid  for,  than  the  white  man  of  this 
class.  Of  course  there  are  a  great  many  small  farmers  of  a  bet 
ter  type  but  in  the  main,  the  point  of  antagonism  with  the  negroes 
is  with  the  landless  white  people.  They  support  mainly  the  public 
spirit  against  the  negroes,  which  is  murderously  manifested  in 
lynchings.  They  have  slight  qualms  of  conscience  on  the  subject. 
Sixteen  white  men  were  arrested  in  connection  with  the  Atlanta 
riot  of  1906.  Investigation  established  that  not  a  one  of  them 
owned  a  foot  of  land,  but  came  from  the  mill  population  about 
the  city. 

Here  then  is  an  element  of  our  Southern  situation  to  be  made 
distinct.  It  is  a  definite  task  in  the  South  to  draw  them  up  the 
ladder.  They  define  the  inflammable  fringes  of  the  race  problem, 
and  at  the  same  time  such  tendencies  as  exist  in  fact  toward  mis- 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE}   SOUTH  95 

cegenation.  Upon  this  line  that  marks  the  contact  between  ten 
million  negroes  and  seven  million  backward  white  people  the  South 
must  concentrate  its  concern.  Considering  the  welfare  of  the 
negro  race  the  important  necessity  is  to  get  the  white  people  just 
above  them  on  the  ladder  moving  up  faster.  The  progress  of 
the  negro  race  halts  at  the  heels  of  the  white  man  or  crowds 
upon  his  heels  inevitably. 

On  the  lowest  rungs  of  the  ladder  is  the  great  mass  of  now 
nearly  ten  million  negroes.  Are  they  climbing — can  they  climb? 
Do  they  constitute  a  greater  peril  as  companions  and  beneficiaries 
of  our  upward  movement,  or  as  a  drag  upon  our  upward  move 
ment?  It  seems  to  me  that  these  questions  are  not  difficult  to 
answer.  They  have  been  answered  over  and  over  by  census 
reports  and  by  what  every  man  may  observe.  Wherever  the 
negroes  of  any  given  community  are  densest  in  ignorance,  there  the 
greater  evils  and  the  greater  hopelessness  of  the  race  problem  is 
found,  and  there  the  statistics  of  lawlessness  and  vice  are  abound 
ing.  In  her  best  mood,  the  South  points  to  the  difference  be 
tween  the  jungle  African  of  the  slave-ship  and  the  Southern 
negro  of  today  with  some  degree  of  moral  pride  in  the  astound 
ing  contrast.  A  fair  acceptance  of  this  record  of  improvement 
justifies  a  good  faith  in  the  negro's  availability  for  further  im 
provement.  Bound  up  with  us  as  he  is — intermixed  with  all 
our  life — related  in  every  way  to  our  industrial  progress,  and 
confronting  an  age  which  demands  efficiency  and  skill  and  a 
higher  order  of  intelligence  in  labor,  surely  the  South  cannot 
comfortably  contemplate  the  future  unless  the  advancement  of 
the  negroes  is  included  in  our  hopes  and  in  our  plans  of  develop 
ment. 

But  does  the  negro  justify  such  hopes?  With  one  condition 
guaranteed,  most  assuredly.  That  condition  is  the  opportunity 
of  contact  with  Southern  white  people  who  will  furnish  him 
noble  examples  and  lend  him  encouraging  leadership.  Some 
things  to  justify  the  strong  faith  and  the  good  works  of  the 
Southern  people  about  the  negro  are  demonstrated  beyond  dis 
pute.  The  longest  distance  ever  traveled  by  a  race  in  just  three 
hundred  years  was  from  Jungle  in  Africa  to  Highway  in  Amer 
ican  civilization.  The  American  negro  has  made  that  journey. 


96  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

Whatever  remains  unattained  and  difficult,  whatever  the  remain 
ing  gap  from  the  front  rank  as  races  stand  at  the  opening  of 
the  twentieth  century,  that  fact  is  unchallengable,  that  distinc 
tion  for  the  negro  is  secure. 

It  has  been  a  peculiar  pilgrimage,  the  strangest  in  the  annals 
of  history.  It  can  scarcely  be  reckoned  a  pilgrimage  as  we  are 
used  to  speak  of  other  great  human  movements  onward  and  up 
ward.  Stage  by  stage  from  tribal  slavery  in  Africa,  to  com 
mercial  bondage  in  the  slave-ships,  to  the  feudal  serfdom  of  the 
South,  and  then  to  sudden  emancipation,  and  then  to  a  dazzling 
day  of  citizenship  in  a  republic,  the  negro  came,  always  thrust 
on  by  dramatic  forces  he  did  not  originate  and  over  which  he 
had  no  control. 

One  may  question  if  the  three  hundred  years  of  such  swift 
and  unanticipated  changes,  and  so  marked  by  unnatural  press 
ures,  does  not  place  the  negro's  progress  outside  the  category 
of  evolution  entirely.  Environment  is  the  word  that  explains 
what  we  see,  and  providence  is  the  only  word  that  indicates  the 
inscrutable  forces  at  work  back  of  it  all. 

To  some  sympathetic  students  the  fact  that  the  negro's  im 
provement  has  come  to  him  so  largely  without  his  own  initiative 
has  not  been  regarded  as  a  hopeful  feature  of  his  history.  This 
is,  however,  to  be  said.  Although  no  driving  impulse  of  dis 
content  or  aspiration  from  within  sent  him  upon  his  remark 
able  adventure  of  progress,  yet  at  each  pause  of  the  advance, 
the  negro  race  has  shown  an  inward  capacity  for  grasping  the 
gain  tenaciously.  So  if  the  race  may  not  be  credited  with  pio 
neering  power,  the  capacity  of  response  to  opportunity  and  the 
passion  for  holding  on  to  advantage  may  suggest  a  compensation 
for  the  apparent  absence  of  initiative  ability. 

There  is  one  truth  above  all  others  to  be  kept  clear  by  South 
ern  Christians — namely,  that  the  presence  of  ten  million  negroes 
in  the  South  is  not  a  problem  that  merely  puts  our  political  in 
stitutions  to  the  test.  It  is  profoundly  a  social  and  moral  prob 
lem,  and  it  puts  our  Christianity  to  the  test.  It  is  the  Christian's 
gospel  that  is  in  the  crucible.  Speaking  as  a  Southern  man,  I  do 
not  dare  to  risk  a  Christianity  or  a  faith  of  Christianity  as  trust 
worthy  for  myself  or  mine  in  any  issue  which  doubts  the  effi- 


THE   NKGRO  IN  THE)   SOUTH  97 

ciency  of  Christ  for  all  the  difficulties  that  have  discouraged  the 
South  in  relation  to  the  negro. 

The  Christian  citizen  "not  only  confronts  evil  and  claims 
that  it  can  be  destroyed,  and  stands  before  sorrow  and  claims 
that  it  can  be  transfigured,  he  stands  amid  the  misunderstand 
ings  of  men,  amid  the  perversions  in  the  purposed  order  of  life, 
the  ugly  twists  that  have  been  given  to  fellowships  which  were 
ordained  to  be  beautiful  and  true,  and  he  proclaims  their  pos 
sible  rectification  in  Christ."  Whether  of  Samaritan  or  Jew, 
Greek  or  Barbarian,  Bond  or  Free,  Black  or  White. 

—1 


Negro    Criminality. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

Each  professional  man  approaches  the  Negro  Question  from 
the  viewpoint  suggested  ;by  the  bias  of  his  own  technical  mind. 
The  doctor  sees  the  real  substance  of  the  problem  in  the  health 
and  sanitary  conditions  of  the  race;  by  remedying  these  condi 
tions  he  hopes  to  solve  the  problem.  The  educator  evaluates  the 
race  question  in  terms  of  illiteracy  statistics,  and  contends  that 
when  the  black  man  is  brought  completely  under  the  civilizing 
influence  of  the  school,  the  really  important  step  has  been  taken 
in  the  establishment  of  abiding  race  relationships.  The  lawyer 
argues  that  the  criminality  of  the  colored  race  constitutes  the 
problem;  by  developing  in  the  negro  a  real  respect  for  the  laws 
of  society  we  introduce  the  true  element  of  solution. 

It  cannot  be  too  early  realized  in  any  study  of  Southern  race 
conditions  that  the  problem  is  wider  and  deeper  than  any  one 
angle  of  approach  suggested  by  professional  interest.  The  first 
impression  that  a  conscientious  student  gathers  in  his  survey  of 
the  question  is  its  pervasiveness.  And  the  only  solution  that  can 
be  hoped  for  must  ground  itself  upon  a  recognition  of  this  fact. 
Educators  in  the  fulness  of  their  wisdom  will  never  be  able  to 
bring  symmetry  out  of  the  tangled  race  relationships  until  they 
are  given  the  intelligent  cooperation  of  all  the  other  forces. 
The  lawyer  can  accomplish  much  by  addressing  himself  to  the 
reform  of  criminal  conditions  among  the  negroes,  but  his  un 
supported  activity  will  not  of  itself  solve  the  problem.  The 
question  must  find  its  solution  in  the  attitude  and  wisdom  of 
the  whole  region  concerned  and  not  exclusively  in  the  opinions 
of  a  few  leaders,  however  large-visioned. 

Edgar  Gardner  Murphy,  one  of  the  sanest  students  that  ever 
brought  his  understanding  and  sympathy  to  bear  on  the  ques 
tion,  made  a  distinct  contribution  to  the  thought  on  the  subject 
when  he  declared  before  a  Philadelphia  audience  in  1900: 

"I  think  that  you  will  see  that  there  is  today  with  us  not  the 
negro  problem  only,  under  its  varied  personal  and  local  phases, 

98 


THE  NEGRO  IN  THE)  SOUTH  99 

but  other  problems,  with  it,  and  I  think  that  you  will  understand 
me,  therefore,  if  I  say  that  when  a  man  attempts  to  discuss  the 
problem  at  the  South,  he  may  begin  with  the  Negro  but  he  really 
touches  with  however  light  a  hand  the  whole  bewildering  prob 
lem  of  civilization." 

In  abstracting  the  various  phases  of  the  question,  the  student 
exposes  himself  to  the  danger  of  seeing  one  fact  so  vividly  that 
he  overlooks  the  other  facts  necessary  to  explain  it.  He  is  liable 
to  lose  the  sense  of  perspective  which  alone  will  give  value  to 
his  work.  Very  fortunately  the  study  of  Negro  Criminality  is 
not  attended  by  such  dangers  in  their  most  acute  form.  It  is  a 
study  of  negative  values,  of  those  points  where  the  negro  has 
failed  to  square  with  the  dead-level  average  of  organized  society. 
It  must  take  note  of  all  racial  and  environmental  disadvantages 
as  explanatory  of  failure.  Back  of  the  criminal  instincts  of  the 
negro  we  see  the  working  of  all  the  economic,  religious  and  so 
cial  agencies.  Negro  criminality  is  the  result  of  many  forces. 
It  is  a  single  concrete  expression  of  the  racial  frailties  plus  the 
unfavorable  conditions  under  which  the  backward  race  is  at 
tempting  to  work  out  its  status  with  respect  to  the  advanced 
race. 

Excessive  criminality  cannot  be  regarded  as  an  infallible  test 
of  social  deterioration.  With  the  multiplication  of  laws,  with 
the  perfection  of  methods  of  detecting  violations  and  with 
changes  in  criminal  procedure,  the  ratio  of  the  criminal  element 
to  the  total  population  might  conceivably  increase  without  any 
alarming  significance.  Furthermore,  criminality  as  a  standard 
is  purely  negative,  ignoring  the  larger  positive  phase  where  the 
law  has  called  forth  obedience  and  respect.  It  is  a  test  which 
concerns  itself  with  failures  rather  than  successes. 

Yet  a  study  of  criminality  suggests  quite  clearly  where  the 
negro  is  breaking  down  as  a  law-abiding  citizen.  By  enabling 
the  student  to  discover  in  ever  so  general  a  manner  the  sources 
of  crime,  it  fortifies  him  with  facts  that  should  have  some  in 
fluence  in  the  framing  of  laws.  The  study  of  crime  under  nor 
mal  conditions  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  of  the  social  sciences, 
but  it  is  especially  difficult  in  the  case  of  the  Afro-American 
where  there  is  such  a  complicated  admixture  of  instincts  and 


100  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

motives.  However,  it  is  in  this  field  that  it  should  yield  its  best 
results  once  the  difficulties  have  been  overcome.  The  problem 
is  not:  why  do  negroes  commit  crimes?  It  is  rather:  why  do 
negroes  contribute  a  heavier  criminality  than  the  white  man? 
It  is  relative  rather  than  absolute. 

The  criminal  negro  is  not  numerically  a  large  proportion  of 
the  race  yet  he  constitutes  in  the  eyes  of  some  men  who  are 
privileged  to  speak  with  authority  the  real  negro  question.  He 
contributes  the  largest  share  of  the  friction  that  arises  between 
the  two  races — especially  now  that  partial  disfranchisement  has 
removed  political  friction  in  the  South.  He  is  the  vagrant  and 
the  shiftless  class  which  too  often  is  regarded  as  composing  the 
bulk  of  the  race.  He  is  the  weak  man  industrially,  the  pauper, 
the  economic  deadweight.  By  those  rare  crimes  against  white 
womanhood  he  enrages  the  white  people  into  "retributive  justice" 
which  degenerates  into  brutal  lawlessness.  What  he  lacks  in 
numerical  strength  he  supplies  by  the  position  which  he  holds 
in  the  eyes  of  the  people.  To  the  law-abiding  members  of  his 
own  people  he  sometimes  represents  the  spirit  of  race  aggressive 
ness;  he  dares  violate  the  laws  made  and  enforced  by  the  white 
man.  And  not  any  too  rarely  he  is  regarded  by  them  as  a  ro 
mantic  figure  who  through  his  crimes  wages  a  .guerilla  welfare 
against  the  white  man's  society.  Sometimes  the  white  man  takes 
the  other  extreme  and  shoves  all  negroes  into  the  same  class 
with  the  criminal  element.  The  criminal  negro  has  somehow  or 
other  fixed  himself  into  the  nervous  system  of  the  unthinking 
members  of  both  races. 

/  HISTORICAL  BACKGROUND. 

*  Negro  criminality  can  justly  be  regarded  as  a  phase  of  the 
negro  question  which  made  its  appearance  only  with  freedom. 
In  slavery  any  criminal  instincts  of  the  negro  were  repressed  by 
the  strict  surveillance  maintained  under  the  plantation  govern 
ment.  The  shiftless,  vicious  negro  was  herded  into  the  same 
class  with  the  honest,  industrious  slave  and  forced  to  apply  him 
self  to  assigned  tasks.  The  routine  of  his  life  seldom  offered  the 
opportunity  or  the  temptation  for  criminal  offences.  He  was 
so  hedged  in  by  restrictions  that  there  was  no  free  play  to  his 
activities. 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  101 

Dr.  H.  B.  Frissell,  principal  of  the  Hampton  Institute,  has 
described  the  situation  very  graphically: 

"Slavery  had  its  good  features  and  uses  as  well  as  its  bad  ones. 
While  it  kept  negroes  from  being  educated,  it  also  kept  them 
from  being  criminal.  The  institution  of  slavery  put  all  negroes 
on  a  dead  level.  The  black  men  with  criminal  and  vicious  in 
stincts  were  forced  like  all  the  rest  to  be  industrious.  They  had 
no  opportunity  to  commit  crimes  and  if  they  broke  over  the 
bounds  they  were  punished  so  relentlessly  that  they  were  speed 
ily  cowed  into  subjection.  In  this  way,  slavery  as  a  matter  of 
course  prevented  crime  to  a  great  extent.  When  emancipation 
came,  the  naturally  depraved  and  criminal  class  of  negroes  were 
let  loose  and  deprived  of  this  restraining  influence  of  the  slavery 
system.  Such  men  began,  naturally,  to  confound  license  with 
liberty,  and  they  have  instinctively  degenerated  since  slavery 
ays."  1 

Furthermore,  the  negro  slave  could  become  a  criminal  in  the 
eyes  of  the  law  only  in  the  more  serious  offences.  The  statu 
tory  enactments  of  the  several  states  "never  extended  to  or  in 
cluded  the  slave,  either  to  protect  or  to  render  him  responsible, 
unless  specifically  named  or  included  by  necessary  implication."  2 
The  ordinary  systems  of  criminal  procedure  in  the  several  states 
did  not  cover  offences  committed  by  slaves  and  each  common 
wealth  was  forced  to  enact  a  slave  code  to  provide  penalties  for 
violations  of  the  law  by  the  negroes.  The  conditions  of  servi 
tude  took  away  any  deterrent  influence  that  pecuniary  fine,  im 
prisonment  or  banishment  might  have  possessed  for  the  negro. 
And  there  were  only  two  forms  of  punishment  that  had  any 
value  when  invoked  against  the  negro  offender — whipping  and 
death.  "The  extremes,  death  and  whipping,  being  the  only  avail 
able  punishments,  it  becomes  necessary,  in  forming  a  slave  code, 
to  throw  all  offences  under  the  one  or  the  other."  3 

Only  such  offences  were  recognized  by  the  state  as  were  too 
serious  to  be  dealt  with  efficiently  by  the  masters.  Many  crimes 
were  made  capital  when  committed  -by  the  negro  because  there 


1.  Patterson,  The  Negro  and  His  Needs,  187-188. 

2.  T.  R.  R.  Cobb,  The  Law  of  Slavery,  259. 

3.  Ibid,  2GO. 


102  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

was  no  other  adequate  penalty  at  hand.  For  instance,  we  find 
manslaughter  punishable  with  death  in  the  case  of  the  negro 
slave  and  with  life-imprisonment  in  the  case  of  the  white.  But 
as  Cobb  points  out  in  his  scholarly  work  on  "The  Law  of  Slavery," 
the  capital  punishment  was  "seldom  inflicted  undeservedly." 
"The  slave's  situation  is  such  that  the  temptation  to  commit  the 
higher  offences  is  very  slight  and  only  the  most  vicious  are  ever 
guilty  of  them.  Executions  of  slaves  for  any  of  these  offences 
are  very  rare."  4 

The  slave-owners  lived  sometimes  in  dread  of  servile  insur 
rections — a  dread  which  occasional  uprisings  like  Nat  Turner's 
kept  acute.  Many  laws  designed  to  prevent  insurrections  were 
enacted  against  slave  gatherings  and  these  laws  were  enforced 
by  the  rural  constabulary  rather  than  by  the  individual  masters. 
In  1822,  a  committee  of  Charleston  citizens  memorialized  the 
state  legislature  to  enact  laws  to  counteract  the  discontent  preva 
lent  among  the  slaves.  After  reviewing  the  recent  abortive  in 
surrections,  the  petitioners  summarized  the  situation  as  follows : 

"Under  the  influence  of  mild  and  generous  feelings,  the  own 
ers  of  slaves  in  our  state  were  rearing  up  a  system  which  ex 
tended  many  privileges  to  our  negroes ;  afforded  them  greater 
protection ;  relieved  them  from  numerous  restraints ;  enabled  them 
to  assemble  without  the  presence  of  a  white  person  for  the  pur 
pose  of  social  intercourse  or  religious  worship;  yielding  to  them 
the  facilities  of  acquiring  most  of  the  comforts  and  many  of 
the  luxuries  of  improved  society;  and  what  is  of  more  impor 
tance,  affording  them  means  of  enlarging  their  minds  and  ex 
tending  their  information ;  a  system  whose  establishment  many 
persons  could  not  reflect  upon  without  concern,  and  whose  rapid 
extension,  the  experienced  among  us  could  not  observe  but  with 
'fear  and  trembling;'  nevertheless,  a  system  which  met  the  ap 
probation  of  the  greater  number  of  our  citizens  who  exulted  in 
what  they  termed  the  progress  of  liberal  ideas  upon  the  subject 
of  slavery,  whilst  many  good  and  pious  persons  fondly  cherished 
the  expectation  that  our  negroes  would  be  influenced  in  their 
conduct  towards  their  owners  by  sentiments  of  affection  and  grat 
itude. 

4.  Ibid.,  The  Law  of  Slavery,  260. 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  103 

"The  tranquility  and  good  order  manifested  for  a  time  among 
the  slaves  induced  your  memorialists  to  regard  the  extension  of 
their  privileges  in  a  favorable  light,  and  to  entertain  the  hope 
that  as  they  were  more  indulged,  they  would  become  more  satis 
fied  with  their  condition  and  more  attached  to  the  whites. 

"But  in  the  midst  of  these  promising  appearances  whilst  the 
citizens  were  reposing  the  utmost  confidence  in  the  fidelity  of  the 
negroes,  the  latter  were  plotting  the  destruction  of  the  former."  5 

Robert  Toambs  in  his  famous  defence  of  slavery  delivered  in 
Tremont  Temple,  Boston,  January  24,  1855,  made  a  very  un 
favorable  comparison  between  the  criminality  of  the  free  negro 
at  the  North  and  the  slave  negro  at  the  South.  "Denied  social 
equality  by  an  irreversible  law  of  nature  and  political  rights  by 
municipal  law,  incapable  of  maintaining  an  unequal  struggle  with 
a  superior  race,  the  melancholy  history  of  his  career  of  freedom 
is  most  usually  found  recorded  in  criminal  courts,  jails,  poor- 
houses  and  penitentiaries.  The  authentic  statistics  of  crime  and 
poverty  show  an  amount  of  crime  among  the  free  blacks  out  of 
all  proportions  to  their  numbers  when  compared  to  any  class  of 
the  white  race."  Toombs  in  his  parallel  paints  a  roseate  picture 
of  the  negro  slave  in  the  South,  declaring  that  he  was  working 
out  his  social  salvation  under  the  most  normal  conditions. 

The  scant  records  upon  which  any  opinion  can  be  based  tell 
the  story  of  a  minimum  amount  of  criminality  among  the  slave 
negroes.  Naturally  the  master  was  unwilling  to  release  his  ju 
risdiction  over  his  slave  and  would  consent  to  a  transference  of 
authority  only  in  the  most  aggravated  cases.  No  owner  wished 
to  lose  even  temporarily  the  services  of  his  slave  through  im 
prisonment  for  some  petty  violation  of  the  law ;  he  preferred 
himself  to  inflict  some  form  of  corporal  punishment.  The  rec 
ords,  however,  show  many  cases  of  executions  for  rape,  murder 
and  arson. 

Hoffman  has  stated  the  situation  in  the  following  summary: 

"During  slavery  the  negro  committed   fewer  crimes  than  the 


5.  Memorial  of  the  Citizens  of  Charleston  to  the  Senate  and  House 
of  Representatives  of  the  State  of  South  Carolina.  Quoted  in  Phil 
lips,  Documentary  History  of  American  Society,  103. 


104  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

white  man  and  only  on  rare  occasions  was  he  guilty  of  the  more 
atrocious  crimes,  such  as  rape  and  murder  of  white  females. 
Whether  from  cowardice  or  respect  and  devotion  to  his  master, 
he  respected  the  persons  of  his  master's  household,  and  few  in 
deed  are  the  recorded  attempts  at  insurrection  and  revolt  on  the 
part  of  the  Southern  slave.  Criminal  statistics  of  the  colored 
population  previous  to  the  emancipation  are  difficult  to  obtain, 
and  on  account  of  the  abnormal  conditions  of  servitude  would 
have  little  value  for  purposes  of  comparison  with  the  wholly 
different  conditions  of  freedom."  6 

No  more  unfortunate  period  in  American  history  could  have 
been  chosen  for  the  justification  of  emancipation  than  the  few 
years  following  the  War  between  the  States.  Four  million  slaves 
were  legislated  into  freedom  as  an  incident  to  a  greater  issue. 
They  were  thrown  clear  of  all  the  restraints  which  had  formed 
such  a  large  part  of  their  life  in  the  past  and  placed  upon  an 
equal  basis  of  individual  responsibility  with  the  men  who  had 
been  their  masters.  They  stood  as  a  buffer  between  the  senti 
mental  enthusiasm  of  the  North  and  the  half-hearted  acquies 
cence  of  the  South.  No  resort  could  be  had  to  the  dispassionate 
wisdom  of  the  nation;  they  could  only  appeal  from  the  prejudice 
of  one  section  to  the  counter  prejudice  of  the  other  section. 
The  civil  society  of  the  South  where  the  negro  was  to  work  out 
his  economic  salvation  lacked  many  of  the  elements  of  stability. 
Nothing  less  than  the  highest  order  of  statesmanship  could  have 
brought  the  negro  safely  through  this  period. 

The  slave  had  very  naturally  come  to  regard  physical  labor 
and  a  stationary  life  as  the  badges  of  his  degradation.  When 
he  was  no  longer  forced  to  work  and  when  no  restrictions  were 
placed  upon  his  movements,  he  was  tempted  to  drift  into  shift 
less,  vagrant  habits.  His  Northern  friends  failed  to  impress 
upon  him  the  dignity  of  labor  and  sometimes  discountenanced 
any  desire  on  his  part  to  work  for  his  former  masters.  He  was 
alienated  from  the  whites  of  the  South. 

This  was  the  strategic  time  in  the  development  of  the  Afro- 


6.  Hoffman,   Race  Traits   and  Tendencies   of  the   American   Negro, 
217. 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  105 

American.  He  had  no  traditions  that  came  to  him  from  the 
past.  In  slavery  he  had  had  no  legal  marriage,  no  legal  family, 
no  legal  control  over  his  children.  He  was  adrift  upon  the  sea 
without  a  chart;  to  mix  metaphors,  he  was  doled  out  cake  when 
he  needed  bread.  He  possessed  freedom  to  the  point  of  satiety 
but  it  was  an  unregulated  freedom.  And  it  is  not  possible  for  a 
race  that  has  known  only  bondage  to  change  to  the  status  of  the 
freedman  without  some  resulting  evil  effects.  If  there  had  arisen 
among  the  negroes  at  this  time  a  great  constructive  leader  who 
would  have  concerned  himself  not  so  much  with  rights  as  with 
opportunities,  the  negro  might  have  passed  through  this  critical 
period  with  greater  safety.  But  in  his  racial  ignorance  he  drifted 
into  habits  of  pauperism  and  vagrancy,  and  pauperism  and  va 
grancy  in  the  disorders  of  these  days  meant  crime.  And  it  is  at 
this  time  that  the  criminal  negro  emerges  as  one  of  the  compli 
cations  of  the  race  question. 

NEGRO  LAW. 

In  the  days  of  slavery,  the  negro  could  become  a  criminal  in 
the  eyes  of  the  law  only  by  the  enactment  of  specific  legislation. 
The  presumption  was  that  his  conduct  was  not  criminal  unless 
the  state  in  whose  jurisdiction  he  resided  had  passed  laws  pro 
viding  specifically  that  such  action  when  committed  by  a  negro 
slave  was  indictable.  Each  Southern  commonwealth  passed  so- 
called  slave  codes  which  enumerated  the  offences  for  which  the 
negro  could  be  punished  and  fixed  the  penalties.  Very  often  the 
same  crime  carried  different  punishments  according  to  whether 
the  author  was  black  or  white.  If  a  white  man  and  a  negro  were 
accomplices  in  manslaughter,  the  white  man  could  be  punished 
with  a  maximum  penalty  of  life  imprisonment  while  the  crime 
was  a  capital  offence  for  the  negro.  On  the  other  hand,  petit 
larceny  was  not  even  regarded  as  a  misdemeanor  when  com 
mitted  by  a  negro  slave  yet  it  was  punishable  with  a  prison  sen 
tence  if  the  offender  were  white. 

But  with  emancipation,  the  negro  was  placed  on  a  basis  of 
absolute  equality  with  the  white  man  before  the  law.  Theoret 
ically  no  discriminations  in  his  favour  or  to  his  injury  were  made 
when  he  violated  the  laws  of  organized  society.  The  equality 


106  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

which  the  Abolitionists  had  demanded  for  him  was  now  his,  but 
it  was  an  equality  of  legal  responsibility  which  worked  the  freed- 
man  as  much  injustice  as  justice. 

The  attitude  assumed  by  many  men  in  the  South  toward  the 
negro  is  based  upon  the  assumption  that  there  are  radical  dif 
ferences  between  the  white  man  and  the  black  man — differences 
which  obtain  in  every  aspect  of  human  life.  It  is  contended  that 
between  the  two  races  there  intervene  centuries  of  evolution. 
The  white  man  of  America  is  the  product  of  the  highest  stage 
of  civilization  yet  reached;  the  negro  is  representative  of  a  bar 
baric  race  just  struggling  up  from  the  darkness  of  dense  igno 
rance  into  the  light  of  culture.  In  the  face  of  such  manifest  dif 
ferences,  can  it  be  expected  that  the  same  law  should  be  enforced 
with  an  impartial  severity  to  the  two  races?  Should  a  body  of 
laws  evolved  by  the  white  man  to  govern  principally  the  actions 
of  the  white  man  be  invoked  against  the  negro  without  abating 
one  jot  or  tittle  of  its  original  provisions?  Can  the  same  civic 
responsibility  which  the  Anglo-Saxon  has  built  up  through  num 
berless  generations  be  relied  upon  to  guide  the  negro  who  is  so 
few  generations  away  from  the  barbarism  of  the  African  jungles? 
Can  it  be  argued  that  what  is  good  for  the  white  man  is  good  for 
the  negro?  If  the  negro  would  only  live  up  to  the  law  of  the 
white  man,  he  would  cease  to  be  a  problem.  But  can  we  expect 
him  to  meet  the  same  ideals  of  law-abiding  citizenship  which  we 
are  justified  in  expecting  from  the  white  man?  Are  we  war 
ranted  in  excusing  actions  on  his  part  which  we  punish  in  the  case 
f  the  white  man? 

Many  judges  of  Southern  courts  are  often  lenient  toward  ne 
gro  offenders  when  they  are  especially  severe  toward  white  per 
sons  guilty  of  the  same  violations.  In  cases  of  other  crimes, 
they  reverse  the  discriminations  and  punish  the  negro  to  the 
full  extent  of  the  law  while  letting  the  white  man  off  with  the 
minimum  penalty.  They  justify  their  distinctions  in  grading 
punishment  with  the  contention  that  a  violation  of  the  law  does 
not  carry  the  same  degree  of  criminality  when  committed  by  the 
negro  and  by  the  white.  Local  conditions  as  affected  by  the 
enforcement  of  the  laws  in  question  are  the  determining  in- 


THE   NEGRO  IN  THE)   SOUTH  107 

fluence  in  many  cases.     This  judge-made  law   is  called   ''negro 
law"  in  the  South. 

Mr.  S.  F.  Davis  of  the  Mississippi  Bar  is  an  article  which  ap 
peared  in  a  recent  issue  of  Case  and  Comment  refers  to  "Negro 
Law  in  Mississippi"  in  the  following  descriptive  paragraph: 

"The  'negro  law'  of  Mississippi  is  a  law  of  many  parts,  and 
is  composed  partly  of  the  common  law,  statutory  law  and  the 
unwritten  law,  and  to  be  able  to  tell  just  which  one  of  these 
several  branches  of  the  law  applies  in  any  given  case  is  an  art 
rarely  possessed  except  by  a  native  born  attorney.  From  the 
letter  of  our  statutes,  a  stranger  might  justifiably  infer  that  they 
applied  to  all  persons  within  this  state,  without  regard  to  race, 
color,  or  previous  condition  of  servitude,  but  nothing  is  farther 
from  the  truth.  The  judges,  lawyers,  and  jurors  all  know  that 
some  of  our  laws  are  intended  to  be  enforced  against  everybody, 
while  others  are  to  be  enforced  against  the  white  people,  and 
others  are  to  be  enforced  only  against  the  negroes ;  and  they  are 
enforced  accordingly." 

In  the  fundamental  rights  of  property,  the  negro  is  fully  pro 
tected.  His  privileges  of  ownership  are  guaranteed  to  him  by  all 
courts  of  law  and  this  guarantee  is  fulfilled  with  equal  justice  to 
all  races.  The  Southern  people  realize  very  clearly  that  the  hope 
of  the  negro  race  lies  largely  in  the  incentive  to  the  accumulation 
of  property.  To  destroy  or  weaken  this  incentive  would  be  sui 
cidal.  Such  discriminations  would  confirm  the  negro  in  his 
nomadic  habits  and  would  militate  against  those  stable  influences 
which  the  white  leaders  have  striven  to  introduce.  The  law  must 
assist  in  the  effort  to  make  the  negro  a  propertied  class. 

Discriminations  in  the  administration  of  justice  ordinarily  arise 
when  the  penalty  inflicted  upon  the  alleged  offender  is  incom 
mensurate  with  the  nature  of  the  crime  committed.  It  is  ob 
vious  that  discriminations  may  be  either  positive  or  negative. 
The  punishment  may  be  too  severe  or  too  lenient  as  judged  by 
the/standards  which  prevail  in  the  community. 
^Positive  discriminations  against  the  negro  in  the  South  arise 
in  those  cases  where  the  offence  committed  is  of  such  a  nature 
and  involves  such  a  degree  of  moral  turpitude  as  to  aggravate 


108  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

existing  race  prejudices.  They  are  most  usually  crimes  of  bod 
ily  violence  which  have  some  racial  significance. 
i/Negative  discriminations,  on  the  other  hand,  are  found  in  those 
cases  where  the  offence  indicates  a  moral  lapse  of  no  grave  im 
portance  racially  speaking.  It  must  be  confessed  that  our  com 
plex  civilization  has  labelled  some  actions  as  criminal  which  are 
not  criminal  in  intent.  Some  Southern  courts  take  the  ground 
that  the  negro  is  particularly  prone  to  commit  such  offences 
and  consequently  they  are  unwilling  to  punish  them  according  to 
the  full  letter  of  the  law. 

Bigamy  in  the  South  is  usually  punished  with  a  heavy  peni 
tentiary  sentence.  The  very  orthodox  views  which  are  general 
among  the  whites  as  to  the  sanctity  of  marriage  has  created  a 
public  opinion  which  demands  that  bigamists  be  punished  se 
verely  if  they  are  white.  Yet  a  negro  can  commit  this  same  of 
fence  almost  with  impunity ;  he  need  have  little  fear  that  he  will 
ever  be  indicted.  Such  a  distinction  in  the  eyes  of  the  court  is 
probably  due  to  the  prevailing  belief  that  marital  fidelity  is  an 
impossible  ideal  for  the  negro.  In  the  last  analysis  such  a  dis 
crimination  is  unfortunate.  One  of  the  evil  effects  O'f  slavery 
was  to  be  found  in  the  practically  complete  absence  of  any  true 
family  life  and  legal  marriage  among  the  negro  slaves.  Today 
the  negro's/ lapses  from  the  accepted  standard  are  perhaps  most 
often  found  in  sexual  immorality.  It  is  a  short-sighted  wisdom 
which  discriminates  in  favour  of  such  immoral  tendencies.  The 
law  should' set  its  face  sternly  against  such  practices  on  the  part 
of  the  negro  rather  than  attempt  to  compromise  with  them.  The 
negro  needs  a  stiffening  of  the  law  in  this  respect ;  he  should  be 
forced  to  preserve  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage  tie. 

In  some  sections  of  the  black  belt,  the  carrying  of  dangerous 
weapons  by  the  white  men  is  a  very  common  practice  and  seldom 
punished  according  to  the  provisions  of  the  law.  Raymond  Pat 
terson,  a  Northern  newspaper  man  who  visited  the  South  in 
preparing  a  series  of  articles  for  the  Chicago  Tribune  was  very 
much  impressed  with  this  "pistol-toting"  habit,  and  argued  that 
the  negro  imitated  the  white  man  in  this  regard.  In  certain  "de 
ductions"  which  he  drew  from  his  observations,  he  declared : 
"Sew  up  every  pistol  pocket  south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line." 
And  then,  we  are  led  to  believe,  the  problem  would  be  solved. 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE}   SOUTH  109 

Mr.  Davis  in  making  reference  to  the  Negro  Law  in  Missis 
sippi  with  regard  to  the  carrying  of  concealed  weapons 
writes :  "If  a  negro  be  guilty  of  selling  whiskey,  cocaine  or 
carrying  a  pistol,  he  is  severely  dealt  with,  that  being  necessary 
to  protect  the  lives  of  both  white  and  black,  for  there  never  was 
a  more  dangerous  combination  than  a  negro,  whiskey  or  cocaine, 
and  a  pistol.  On  the  other  hand,  all  able-bodied  males  above  the 
age  of  sixteen  years  who  live  in  the  black  belt,  where  the  negroes 
outnumber  the  whites  ten  to  one,  are  supposed  to  have  pistols  of 
standard  make  and  size,  and  are  supposed  to  carry  them  at  all 
times,  either  concealed  or  otherwise,  and  are  supposed  to  know 
how  to  use  them  to  the  best  advantage  on  the  shortest  possible 
notice,  notwithstanding  the  statute  says  that  if  any  person  who 
carries  concealed,  in  whole  or  part,  any  bowie  knife,  dirk  knife, 
butcher  knife,  pistol,  etc.,  shall,  on  conviction,  be  fined  not  less 
than  $25,  etc.,  but  this  law  applies  only  to  the  negro  and  to  the 
whites  who  live  in  the  white  belt,  and  has  no  application  to  the 
whites  who  live  in  the  black  belt." 

It  is  confessedly  true  that  in  some  parts  of  the  Lower  South 
the  negro  is  punished  with  the  maximum  penalty  if  he  is  de 
tected  with  a  concealed  weapon  on  his  person.  Such  severity  is 
absolutely  necessary  to  protect  the  negro  against  his  own  temp 
tations  to  kill  when  the  provocation  is  given  him.  The  unwritten 
law  which  condones  the  offence  when  committed  by  the  white 
person  also  justifies  itself  on  the  ground  of  necessity;  in  a  com 
munity  where  the  negroes  outnumber  their  white  neighbors  by 
a  threateningly  large  margin,  the  latter  feel  that  they  are  at  the 
mercy  of  the  former  and  consequently  must  be  given  every  op 
portunity  to  protect  themselves  against  any  violence.  Any  dis 
crimination  that  this  unwritten  law  countenances  is  not  so 
much  against  the  negro  as  it  is  in  favor  of  the  white  man.  It  is 
not  a  question  of  the  negro's  being  punished  more  severely  than 
he  does  few  other  objects  in  this  world ;  it  has  a  strange  kind  of 
severely  than  he  deserves.  The  average  negro  covets  a  firearm  as 
he  does  few  other  object  in  this  world;  it  has  a  strange  kind  of 
fascination  for  him.  And  sometimes  when  his  anger  is  sud 
denly  aroused,  he  will  commit  murder  if  his  pistol  is  ready  at 
hand;  keep  him  away  from  a  pistol  or  dangerous  weapon  until 
his  passions  have  cooled  and  he  will  soon  forget  the  provocation. 


110  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

The  average  negro  has  not  sufficient  control  over  his  temper  to 
be  trusted  with  a  dangerous  weapon  on  his  person  and  for  his 
own  good  and  for  the  protection  of  society  he  should  -be  severely 
punished  for  such  offences. 

This  Negro  Law  extends  almost  throughout  a  long  category  of 
criminal  offences  punishable  in  the  :South,  lessening  the  penal 
ties  in  some  instances  while  increasing  them  in  others.  That  it 
is  the  product  of  local  conditions  and  local  considerations  is  true ; 
that  it  sometimes  works  to  the  advantage  of  the  negro  and  some 
times  to  his  disadvantage  as  a  citizen  is  equally  as  true.  Those 
who  do  not  understand  the  causes  of  its  existence  would  do  well 
to  withhold  judgment  until  they  have  resided  in  a  Southern 
black-belt  district  long  enough  to  realize  the  discouraging  con 
ditions  with  which  the  Southern  judge  and  jury  must  reckon. 
The  South  is  faced  with  a  terrible  responsibility  when  it  attempts 
to  administer  the  same  law  with  equal  justice  to  two  radi 
cally  different  races  living  side  by  side  in  large  numbers.  To 
one  of  these  races,  this  law  is  the  expression  of  its  past  history 
and  present  hopes;  to  the  other  race,  this  law  is  strange,  some 
times  incongruous,  often  foreign  to  the  temper  of  the  people. 
The  ideal  is  justice  but  justice  does  not  always  mean  that  all 
persons  guilty  of  the  same  crime  shall  be  punished  with  exactly 
the  same  penalty.  The  law  itself  recognizes  that  between  in 
dividuals  there  are  different  degrees  of  guilt  and  in  realization 
of  this  fact  gives  to  the  judge  certain  discretionary  powers  in  the 
fixing  of  punishments.  And  if  the  Southern  judge  exercises 
this  same  prerogative  in  furtherance  of  a  racial  purpose,  friends 
of  the  negro  should  pause  a  long  time  before  accusing  him  of 
prejudiced  discrimination.  The  average  trial  judge  of  the  South 
ern  courts  is  honest,  far-sighted  and  typical  of  the  best  class  of 
the  section ;  he  is  usually  a  sincere  friend  of  the  negro  race.  He 
would  not  countenance  discriminations  in  the  administration  of 
justice  which  were  counselled  by  petty  racial  vanity  or  prejudice. 

ATTITUDE  OF  AVERAGE  NEGRO  TOWARD  CRIME. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  race  has  (been  described  as  being  preemi 
nently  possessed  with  the  passion  for  law  and  order.  Lecky  in 
referring  to  the  Romans  declared  that  "a  deep  reverence  was 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  111 

long  one  of  their  chief  moral  characteristics  and  in  order  that  it 
might  be  inculcated  from  the  earliest  years  it  was  a  part  of  the 
Roman  system  of  education  to  oblige  the  children  to  repeat  by 
rote  the  call  of  the  decemvirs." 

But  the  American  negro  has  no  past  that  impels  him  to  obey 
the  laws  of  the  states;  he  has  no  body  of  traditions  that  group 
around  the  ideal  of  the  majesty  of  the  law.  He  had  no  hand  in 
the  making  of  the  laws;  they  represent  the  result  neither  of  his 
moral  purpose  nor  his  mental  activities.  To  him  government 
is  an  agency  in  whose  creation  he  had  no  voice  and  which  at 
best  he  but  faintly  understands. 

In  his  native  haunts  of  Africa,  law  and  order  were  concepts 
which  were  foreign  to  him.  The  restraints  that  were  placed 
upon  his  actions  were  few,  sometimes  traditional,  but  never  per 
manent  enough  to  assume  the  qualities  of  an  organized  govern 
ment.  When  he  was  imported  to  this  country  and  sold  into  slav 
ery,  he  found  himself  subject  to  restraints  which  in  their  private 
way  almost  amounted  to  absolute  despotism.  When  after  several 
generations  of  servitude  he  was  emancipated,  he  found  himself 
faced  with  the  same  civic  responsibility  that  confronted  the 
average  white  citizen.  Henceforth,  he  was  to  be  held  accounta 
ble  for  his  own  actions;  he  was  to  be  regarded  as  subject  to 
laws  in  whose  making  he  had  no  voice,  of  whose  content  he  was 
totally  ignorant  and  whose  purposes  he  did  not  know.  Equality 
came  to  him  by  a  sudden  revolution  but  it  was  an  equality  that 
demanded  equal  accountability  to  the  laws  of  the  white  man's 
government. 

"In  his  past  stands  no  long  history  of  spiritual  adventure,  of 
social  struggle  and  civic  education, — no  memories  of  a  Martel  at 
Tours,  of  a  Luther  at  Worms,  of  a  Thomas  More  at  London, 
Magna  Charta  and  the  Bill  of  Rights  are  the  historic  symbols  of 
a  collective  struggle,  of  a  social  and  political  achievement,  to 
which  he  has  not  contributed,  but  within  which  he  has  been 
adopted.  The  very  law  which  he  now  invokes  has  come  up 
out  of  the  suffering  and  patience  of  another  social  group.  It  is 
the  flowering  of  the  consciousness  of  another  race,  is  in  its  genius 
and  expression  the  white  man's  law  made  out  of  the  texture  of 
the  white  man's  experience,  and  shot  through  and  through  with 


112  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

the  instinctive  assumption  of  a  psychology  to  which  the  negro  as 
a  negro  is  largely  alien.  This  is  one  reason  why  he  makes  no  in 
timate  response  to  it,  why  it  is  hard  for  the  negro  as  a  negro  to 
understand  it  and  obey  it."  7 

The  average  negro  in  the  South  if  asked  to  define  the  pur 
poses  of  government  will  answer  with  the  indefinite  word,  "pro 
tection."  To  him,  "protection"  covers  a  multitude  of  ideas.  It 
usually  means  a  protection  that  is  devised  by  the  white  man  to 
protect  the  white  man.  It  is  not  often  clear  that  law  as  an  ab 
stract  principle  operates  to  protect  the  peaceful  negro  from  the 
vicious  negro  or  from  the  vicious  white  no  less  than  to  protect 
the  white  man  from  the  vicious  negro  or  vicious  white.  This 
child-like  attitude  of  the  negro  toward  government  is  well  il 
lustrated  in  the  romantic  qualities  with  which  he  invests  the 
policeman.  To  him  the  policeman  personifies  his  concept  of  the 
majesty  of  the  law.  If  the  policeman  is  kind  and  considerate, 
then  to  the  negro  the  law  whose  feeble  instruments  the  police 
man  chances  to  be  is  benevolent.  The  negro  never  looks  beyond 
the  blue-coated  "limb  of  the  law"  and  the  prison  docks  and  sees 
the  true  substance.  Is  it  strange  that  the  average  negro  fails  to 
respond  to  the  appeal  to  obey  the  law  for  the  law's  sake?  Is  it 
anomalous  that  his  response  to  law-abiding  instincts  is  feeble? 

The  negro  who  violates  the  law  most  often  sees  the  shame 
not  in  the  crime  itself,  not  in  the  public  opinion  which  he  has 
outraged,  but  in  the  punishment.  And  even  then  the  shame  which 
he  feels  has  little  power  in  deterring  him  from  further  breaches. 
The  negro  who  pilfers  and  who  serves  his  prison  sentence  for 
feits  little  of  the  esteem  in  which  he  is  held  by  his  fellows.  If 
he  injures  one  of  his  race,  if  he  steals  from  or  assaults  or  mur 
ders  another  negro,  he  may  lower  himself  somewhat  in  the  esti 
mation  of  the  mass  of  his  people.  But  if  his  crime  is  directed 
against  a  white  man,  the  public  opinion  of  his  race  is  much 
kinder  to  him;  sometimes,  such  an  offence  will  raise  him  in  the 
recognition  of  his  fellows  and  give  him  an  added  prestige  be 
cause  of  his  courage  in  attempting  to  set  at  naught  the  white 
man's  law. 

7.  Murphy,  The  Basis  of  Ascendancy,  9. 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  113 

Policemen,  sheriffs  and  detectives  declare  that  it  is  difficult  to 
catch  the  negro  offender  because  the  negroes  in  general  will  not 
cooperate  with  the  authorities  in  giving  information  of  his 
whereabouts  or  in  rendering  any  assistance  in  his  detection. 
Often  they  conceal  him  and  give  him  food,  shelter  and  comfort, 
and  refuse  absolutely  to  turn  him  over  to  the  courts  no  matter 
how  heinous  his  crime.  It  is  a  consideration  of  this  fact  that  has 
led  many  prosecuting  attorneys  in  the  South  to  be  particularly 
severe  in  trying  negro  accessories. 

If  the  friend  of  the  Afro-American  is  truly  interested  in  reduc 
ing  negro  criminality,  he  must  above  all  other  things  teach  the 
negro  that  the  law  is  his  law  and  that  he  is  equally  as  responsible 
as  his  white  neighbor  for  its  enforcement.  Somehow  or  other 
the  negro  must  be  impressed  with  the  fact  that  any  violation  of 
the  law  must  be  punished  and  that  it  is  the  crime  more  than  the 
penalty  that  constitutes  the  disgrace.  Negro  clannishness  with 
respect  to  the  harboring  of  criminals  must  be  destroyed.  If  we 
could  only  convince  the  average  negro  that  justice  is  a  human 
rather  than  a  racial  consideration,  if  we  could  lead  him  to  look 
to  the  courts  for  the  final  adjudication  of  rights,  the  outlook  for 
the  reduction  of  negro  criminality  would  be  more  hopeful  and 
we  could  look  to  the  future  more  optimistically  for  some  solution 
of  this  phase  of  the  problem  of  the  South. 

THE  NEGRO  AND  THE  SOUTHERN  COURTS. 

William  Archer,  the  English  author,  in  his  "Through  Afro- 
America"  concludes  a  very  illuminating  discussion  of  the  rela 
tion  between  the  negro  and  the  Southern  courts  with  the  bold 
assertion:  "This  is  one  of  the  few  points  on  which  there  is  lit 
tle  conflict  of  evidence — the  negro,  in  the  main,  does  not  get 
justice  in  the  courts  of  the  South."  8  No  one  can  question  the 
sincerity  of  purpose  with  which  Mr.  Archer  has  approached  the 
negro  question ;  he  has  attempted  to  make  his  study  as  scholarly, 
and  generally  as  impartial  as  his  hasty  trip  through  the  United 
States  would  justify.  His  book  is  decidedly  more  valuable  than 
the  majority  of  treatises  on  the  American  race  problem  written 

8.  William   Archer,  Through   Afro-America,   97. 

—8 


114  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP   PAPERS 

by  ambitious  visitors  to  this  country.  But  was  he  warranted  by 
the  facts  of  the  case  in  making  such  a  sweeping  accusation 
against  the  Southern  courts? 

If  it  be  true,  as  Mr.  Archer  avers,  that  the  negro  is  denied  the 
full  justice  of  the  courts  of  law,  then  the  negro  is  made  the  object 
of  a  heinous  form  of  oppression.  If  the  Afro-American 
is  really  dealt  with  unjustly  by  the  Southern  courts,  if  he  is  op 
pressed  by  the  institution  which  should  throw  every  protection 
about  him,  the  Southern  program  for  the  solution  of  the  prob 
lem  is  being  nullified  by  the  agency  which  should  be  of  the  great 
est  assistance. 

Many  negro  leaders  have  criticized  the  attitude  that  the  South 
ern  courts  have  assumed  in  trying  cases  in  which  the  accused  is 
of  the  black  race.  This  criticism  has  been  especially  severe  when 
coming  from  negroes  who  live  in  the  East  and  who  view  condi 
tions  from  a  distance.  They  contend  that  when  a  negro  is 
charged  with  a  crime  against  a  white  person  and  is  brought  into 
the  court  for  trial,  he  is  presumed  guilty  and  is  not  given  a  fair 
hearing  according  to  the  facts  of  the  case.  Furthermore,  once 
he  has  been  convicted,  he  is  punished  with  undue  severity. 

Kelly  Miller,  the  negro  educator,  expresses  the  more  thought 
ful  opinion  of  these  critics  in  the  following  extract  taken  from 
an  address  which  he  delivered  before  the  thirteenth  annual  Hamp 
ton  Conference,  July  15,  1909:  9 

"When  negroes  commit  crimes  among  themselves  they  are  not 
apt  to  be  punished  with  undue  severity,  but  when  they  commit 
crimes  against  the  white  race  punishment  is  sure,  swift  and  se 
vere.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the  white  man  commits  an  of 
fence  against  the  negro,  acquittal  is  almost  sure  to  follow;  and 
even  if  convicted  he  is  released  with  a  slight  fine  and  does  not 
go  to  swell  the  prison  record  of  his  race.  Even  where  the  white 
man  commits  an  offence  against  his  own  race  he  is  not  apt  to  re 
ceive  the  full  rigor  of  the  law.  When  two  races  are  living  to 
gether,  the  race  which  assumes  superiority  is  wont  to  regard  it 
self  as  sacred  in  the  eyes  of  the  other,  and  is  very  reluctant  to 
humiliate  any  of  its  members,  even  by  due  process  of  law." 


9.  Southern    Workman,    September,    1909,    474. 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE}   SOUTH  115 

"The  Twentieth  Century  Negro  Literature,"  a  symposium  of 
negro  thought  and  purposes,  published  a  few  years  ago,  carried  a 
very  interesting  discussion  of  the  attitude  of  Southern  courts  in 
punishing  negro  offenders.  The  contributors  to  this  volume  are 
prominent  negroes  and  their  varying  opinions  can  be  regarded  as 
typical  of  the  race. 

R.  S.  Smith,  a  negro  lawyer  of  Washington,  bears  the  fol 
lowing  testimony:  "Whether  or  not  the  negro  charged  with 
crime  is  justly  dealt  with  in  the  courts  of  the  South  can  only  be 
answered  relatively,  for  in  some  localities  fair  trials  are  granted 
even  to  negroes  charged  with  the  commission  of  crime.  But  for 
the  most  part  it  must  be  admitted  that  negroes  brought  into  the 
courts  of  the  South  accused  of  crime  against  white  people  are 
not  accorded  a  fair  trial." 

I.  L.  Purcell,  a  negro  lawyer  of  Florida,  is  strongly  of  the 
opinion  that  the  negro  does  not  secure  an  evenhanded  justice. 
Another  contributor,  George  T.  Robinson,  a  negro  law  teacher, 
also  answers  with  an  emphatic  negative.  The  most  interesting 
views  are  expressed  by  Thomas  Hewins,  a  lawyer  of  Virginia : 

"Whether  the  negro  be  tried  for  a  crime  he  commits  in  the 
North  or  South,  he  will  get  as  fair  a  verdict  upon  the  law  and 
evidence  presented  in  the  Southern  courts  as  in  the  courts  of 
any  State  in  this  Union." 

In  writing  of  the  attitude  of  the  Southern  courts  toward  negro 
attorneys,  Hewins  declares  that  "never  in  my  life  has  anyone 
of  them  (Virginia  judges)  treated  me  amiss  in  their  courts,  nor 
can  I  point  to  a  single  case  where  snap  judgment  was  meted  out 
to  a  man  of  color,  for  the  simple  reason  that  he  was  colored." 
He  concludes  his  discussion  with  the  following  statement:  "If 
a  man  is  of  my  color  and  he  is  wrong,  I  am  against  him.  If  a 
man  is  of  my  color  and  he  is  right,  I  am  for  him.  Let  the  negro 
adopt  this  as  a  maxim  and  justice  in  the  courts  of  the  South  is 
his,  now  and  forever." 

This  charge  of  racial  injustice  is  not  new.  It  is  as  old  as 
negro  freedom  in  this  country.  Many  years  ago  Henry  Grady 
felt  himself  impelled  to  defend  the  South  from  the  charge  that 
her  courts  of  justice  were  closed  to  the  black  man.  Speaking 
in  Boston  in  1889,  two  weeks  before  his  death,  he  denied  the 


116  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

accusation  which  thundered  from  the  North  at  that  time,  claim 
ing  that  the  negro  was  legally  oppressed  in  his  section : 

"What  is  the  testimony  of  the  courts?  In  penal  legislation  we 
have  steadily  reduced  felonies  to  misdemeanors,  and  have  led 
the  world  in  mitigating  punishment  for  crime,  that  we  might 
save,  as  far  as  possible,  this  dependent  race  from  its  own  weak 
ness.  In  our  penitentiary  record  sixty  per  cent,  of  the  prosecu 
tors  are  negroes,  and  in  every  court  the  negro  criminal  strikes 
out  the  colored  juror,  that  white  men  may  judge  his  case. 

"In  the  North,  one  negro  in  every  185  is  in  jail — in  the  South, 
only  one  in  446.  In  the  North  the  percentage  of  negro  prisoners 
is  six  times  as  great  as  that  of  the  native  whites;  in  the  South 
only  four  times  as  great.  If  prejudice  wrongs  him  in  the  South 
ern  courts,  the  record  above  shows  it  to  be  deeper  in  Northern 
courts.  I  assert  here,  and  a  bar  as  intelligent  and  upright  as  the 
bar  of  Massachusetts  will  solemnly  indorse  my  assertion,  that 
in  the  Southern  courts,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,  plead 
ing  for  life,  liberty  or  property,  the  negro  has  a  distinct  advan 
tage  because  he  is  a  negro  apt  to  be  overreached,  oppressed — and 
that  this  advantage  reaches  from  the  juror  in  making  his  ver 
dict  to  the  judge  in  measuring  his  sentence." 

There  is  a  wide  contrariety  of  opinion  among  the  students  of 
the  question  as  to  whether  the  negro  gets  an  equal  measure  of 
justice  with  the  white  man  in  the  courts  of  the  South.  It  must 
be  confessed  that  it  is  not  so  much  a  problem  of  abstract  justice 
as  it  is  of  relative  justice,  if  there  be  such  a  conception  as  rela 
tive  justice.  The  negro  generally  speaking  does  not  receive  pun 
ishments  incommensurate  with  the  grade  of  the  offence ;  he  is 
rarely  convicted  on  leaky  evidence  which  does  not  warrant  a 
conviction.  The  critics  of  the  Southern  courts  base  their  argu 
ments  on  the  contention  that  the  white  man  guilty  of  the  same 
violation  is  punished  lightly  while  the  negro  is  too  often  given 
the  maximum  penalty.  It  is  not  so  much  a  problem  of  the  negro 
criminal's  being  punished  too  heavily  as  it  is  a  question  of  the 
vhite  criminal's  being  punished  too  lightly. 

The  Southern  courts  have  not  been  able  to  adjust  themselves 
completely  to  the  fact  that  they  are  forced  to  try  cases  in  which 
the  defendants  come  from  the  two  most  diverse  races  in  the 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE   SOUTH  117 

world.  And  many  judges  in  exercising  their  prerogative  of  grad 
ing  punishments  are  tempted  to  believe  that  the  same  offence 
may  be  committed  by  a  negro  and  a  white  person  and  call  for 
different  penalties.  And  in  fixing  the  punishments,  they  are  not 
always  harsh  upon  the  negro ;  many  times  they  turn  the  black 
offender  free  with  the  admonition,  "not  guilty  but  don't  do  it 
again,"  while  sentencing  the  white  man  to  the  maximum  penalty. 
Kelly  Miller  once  admitted  that  he  believed  "from  observation 
and  examination,  that,  taking  the  Southern  courts  as  a  whole, 
the  Negro  in  some  cases  is  treated  unusually  severely,  and  in 
others  with  unusual  lenity."  10 

William  H.  Sanford,  of  Montgomery,  Alabama,  in  an  address 
delivered  before  the  Southern  Sociological  Congress  in  1912  de 
clared  that  the  treatment  which  the  negro  received  at  the  hands 
of  the  Southern  courts  varies  with  the  different  sections.  He 
divided  the  South  into  three  distinct  sections : 

"First,  where  the  population  is  composed  largely  of  Negroes, 
sometimes  in  the  ratio  of  as  many  as  ten  to  one.  Second,  where 
the  population  is  largely  white,  usually  at  a  ratio  of  about  two 
to  one.  Third,  where  the  population  is  almost  entirely  white. 

"In  the  first  of  these,  in  the  administration  of  the  criminal  law, 
the  Negro  usually  gets  even  and  exact  justice,  sometimes  tem 
pered  with  mercy.  The  average  white  man  who  serves  on  the 
juries  in  these  counties,  in  his  cooler  moments  and  untouched 
by  racial  influences,  is  a  believer  in  fair  play,  and  for  the  most 
part  is  the  descendant  of  the  men  who  builded  the  foundation  of 
our  states.  But  in  these  communities,  a  white  man  rarely,  if 
ever,  gets  a  fair  and  impartial  trial,  and,  if  indeed  he  is  indicted 
by  a  grand  jury,  his  conviction  or  acquittal  is  determined  more 
upon  his  family  connections,  his  business  standing  or  his  local 
political  influence  than  upon  the  evidence  in  the  case  as  applied 
to  the  law. 

"In  the  second  of  these  communities  the  law  is  more  nearly 
enforced  as  to  both  classes,  and  except  in  cases  where  the  rights 
of  the  one  are  opposed  to  those  of  the  other,  convictions  may  be 
had,  and  indeed  are  often  had,  against  the  members  of  both  races 
for  offences  of  the  more  serious  nature. 


10.  Southern   Workman.     September,    1909,   page   473. 


118  PHEI,PS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

"In  the  third  of  these  communities  the  white  man  usually  gets 
a  fair  trial  and  is  usually  acquitted  or  convicted  according  to  the 
evidence  under  the  law,  while  the  negro,  the  member  of  an  op 
posite  race  has  scant  consideration  before  a  jury  composed  en 
tirely  of  white  men,  and  is  given  the  severest  punishments  for 
the  most  trivial  offences." 

There  are  very  few  communities  in  the  South  where  "the  pop 
ulation  is  almost  entirely  white."  And  it  is  to  be  seriously  ques 
tioned  whether  even  these  few  communities  deserve  the  whole 
sale  criticism  which  Mr.  Sanford  has  offered.  The  bulk  of  the 
Southern  communities  fall  under  his  first  two  divisions.  It  is 
inadvisable  to  divide  the  South  into  three  parts  so  far  as  the  ad 
ministration  of  racial  justice  be  concerned.  Such  an  apportion 
ment  presents  too  great  a  temptation  to  rash  generalizations, 
over  emphasizes  the  importance  of  the  numerical  ratio  between 
the  two  races  and  ignores  the  personality  of  the  local  judges 
which  is  of  primary  importance.  At  best,  such  a  division  can 
only  be  used  as  indicative  of  tendencies. 

An  article  upon  "Negro  in  Crime"  which  appeared  in  the  In 
dependent  for  May  18,  1899,  clips  the  following  items  from  an 
issue  of  the  Atlanta  Constitution: 

"Egbert  Jackson  (coloured),  aged  thirteen,  was  given  a  sen 
tence  of  $50,  or  ten  months  on  the  chain  gang,  for  larceny  from 
the  house  of  -  . 

"The  most  affecting  scene  of  all  was  the  sentencing  of  Joe 
Redding,  a  white  man,  for  the  killing  of  his  brother,  John  Red 
ding  *  *  *  Judge  -  is  a  most  tender-hearted  man  and 

heard  the  prayers  and  saw  the  tears  and  tempered  justice  with 
moderation,  and  gave  the  modern  Cain  two  years  in  the  peniten 
tiary." 

This  "deadly  parallel"  seems  to  argue  that  such  apparent  dis 
criminations  are  common  practices  of  the  Southern  courts,  that 
the  negro  boy  received  the  long  sentence  because  he  was  colored, 
while  the  murderer  was  punished  lightly  because  he  was  white. 
A  similar  comparison  of  the  inequalities  of  punishments  can  be 
paralleled  in  any  state  of  the  Union.  It  is  wrong  to  attempt  to 
excuse  or  explain  away  such  instances  of  injustice.  But  it  is 
equally  as  wrong  to  fasten  them  upon  the  South  as  a  peculiar 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE}   SOUTH  119 

and  distinguishing  feature  of  its  judicial  system.  At  the  time 
when  this  is  being  written  the  papers  are  carrying  the  account 
of  a  young  boy  in  New  Jersey  who  was  sentenced  to  a  year  in 
the  penitentiary  because  he  killed  a  rabbit  out  of  the  game  sea 
son:  and  the  rabbit  was  in  his  back  yard,  eating  vegetables  out 
of  the  garden  at  the  time  when  he  killed  it.  The  same  issues  of 
the  New  York  papers  chronicled  very  sensationally  how  a  cer 
tain  doctor  had  been  sentenced  to  two  years  for  using  the  mails 
to  defraud  investors  out  of  one  million  dollars. 

Alfred  Holt  Stone,  who  is  probably  the  best  informed  and 
most  broad  minded  student  of  the  Southern  Race  Problem,  tes 
tifies  very  interestingly  on  the  subject  of  legal  injustice  in  the 
South : 

"In  a  county  in  Mississippi  in  which  the  Negroes  outnumber 
the  whites  by  9  to  1,  I  have  seen  a  Negro  tried  by  a  white  jury 
for  the  killing  of  a  white  man,  and  walk  out  of  the  court  room 
free  and  without  molestation  and  the  incident  excited  no  word  of 
comment  or  surprise.  I  have  seen  white  men  hanged  who  had 
been  convicted  of  murder  on  Negro  testimony.  Within  the  same 
week  in  my  state  last  year  a  Negro  was  acquitted  by  a  white 
jury  of  a  charge  of  assaulting  a  white  woman,  and  a  white  man 
was  sent  to  the  penitentiary  for  whitecapping  Negroes.  There 
is  not  a  community  in  the  South  where  such  things  as  these  do 
not  constantly  occur,  but  their  record  is  buried  in  the  musty 
documents  of  courts,  instead  of  being  trumpeted  abroad.  The 
white  people  in  these  communities  accept  such  incidents  as  mere 
matters  of  course ;  they  are  not  grouped  and  paraded  in  the 
pages  as  rare  and  striking  phenomena."  11 

In  Asheville,  North  Carolina,  several  years  ago  a  negro  des 
perado  crazed  with  cocaine,  killed  two  policemen  and  wounded 
another  before  he  went  into  hiding.  Two  days  later  he  was 
found  by  a  posse,  offered  resistance  and  was  shot  to  death.  Dur 
ing  the  next  few  months  the  police  authorities  of  the  city  re 
ceived  several  anonymous  letters  from  negroes  threatening  to 
kill  every  policeman  in  the  town.  Three  years  later  a  policeman 
arrested  a  negro  charged  with  stealing  a  cow  and  was  carrying 

11.  Alfred  Holt  Stone,  Studies  in  the  American  Race  Problem,  73. 


120  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

the  offender  to  the  jail  when  the  negro  overpowered  and  killed 
the  officer.  The  negro  escaped  to  South  Carolina  but  shortly 
afterwards  a  negro  who  seemed  to  answer  the  description  of  the 
murderer  was  apprehended  and  brought  to  Asheville  for  trial. 
The  Southern  people  are  especially  severe  in  their  condemnation 
of  negroes  who  assault  sheriffs  or  policemen ;  they  interpret  the 
offence  as  being  the  most  violent  way  of  expressing  absolute  hos 
tility  to  the  law  and  the  punishment  which  they  have  meted  out 
to  such  murderers  has  always  been  swift  and  severe.  Naturally 
this  murder  following  close  on  the  double  murder  of  a  few  years 
previous  tended  to  inflame  the  public  thinking.  When  the  case 
was  called,  certain  damning  evidence  was  presented  yet  it  was 
not  sufficiently  strong  in  the  eyes  of  the  white  jurors  to  convict 
the  accused  and  he  was  acquitted.  This  incident  did  not  attract 
any  attention  as  a  phase  of  the  ubiquitous  negro  question;  there 
was  nothing  strange  about  the  verdict  and  it  was  accepted  as 
something  coming  in  the  natural  course  of  events. 

It  is  hard  for  those  who  have  not  lived  in  the  Southern  States 
to  appreciate  the  difficulties  under  which  the  courts  try  to  ad 
minister  justice  with  an  even  hand  between  the  two  races.  A 
judge  who  believes  in  the  deterrent  value  of  punishment  and 

/who  realizes  the  proneness  of  the  negro  to  crime  is  sorely 
tempted  at  times  to  fix  the  maximum  penalty.  Sometimes  the 
Southern  people  faced  with  the  apparent  hopelessness  of  the 
problem  and  remembering  how  many  of  the  crimes  are  com 
mitted  by  negroes  lose  a  little  of  their  patience  with  their  back 
ward  race.  Justice  cannot  always  be  administered  without  dis 
criminations  when  one  race  contributes  a  disproportionate  share 
of  criminality. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  negro  is  "the  man  farthest 
down"  in  the  South.  He  represents  the  lowest  stratum  of  so 
ciety.  His  poverty  prevents  him  from  hiring  a  lawyer  to  defend 
him  in  the  courts  when  charged  with  a  crime ;  even  when  repre 
sented  by  an  attorney,  his  lack  of  money  precludes  him  from  ap 
proaching  a  first  class  lawyer.  There  has  grown  up  in  the  South  a 
body  of  lawyers  whose  inefficiency  keeps  them  from  securing  a 
respectable  practice  and  who  make  a  specialty  of  defending  ne 
gro  offenders.  This  inadequate  legal  representation  in  the  court 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE)   SOUTH  121 

room  naturally  does  not  increase  the  negro's  chances  of  securing 
a  fair  verdict  according  to  the  facts  of  the  case.  Such  lawyers 
as  the  average  negro  is  able  to  employ  cannot  compete  with  the 
prosecuting  attorney  who  represents  the  commonwealth. 

Booker  Washington  in  an  open  letter  addressed  to  the  South 
ern  papers  under  the  date  of  November  27,  1904,  declared:  "I 
have  said  that  such  lawless  conditions  exist  in  only  a  'few  coun 
ties'  and  I  used  the  word  advisedly.  In  the  great  majority  of  the 
counties  in  the  South,  life  and  property  are  just  as  safe  as  any 
where  in  the  United  States." 

It  is  likely  that  some  Southern  judges  are  unduly  harsh  in  their 
punishment  of  negro  offenders.  But  the  rule  should  not  be  es 
tablished  by  the  exception.  Unfair  judges  can  be  found  occasion 
ally  wherever  justice  is  administered  according  to  fixed  rules 
and  by  human  agencies.  The  Southern  people  realize  that  they 
will  not  profit  by  any  injustice  that  may  be  dealt  out  to  the  negro  ; 
rather  will  such  injustice  react  to  complicate  the  problem  with 
which  their  lives  and  their  fortunes  are  so  intimately  associated. 
Sometimes  in  a  moment  of  passion  or  impatience  with  the  black 
man,  they  may  countenance  unfair  treatment  of  the  negro;  but 
their  sober  second  thought  teaches  them  the  injustice  no  less  than 
the  danger  of  such  policy. 

Judge  W.  H.  Thomas,  who  has  been  a  trial  judge  in  Mont 
gomery,  Alabama,  for  many  years,  touched  the  heart  of  the  prob 
lem  when  he  declared  in  a  speech  delivered  before  the  Southern 
Sociological  Congress  in  1912: 

"My  observation  has  been  that  the  courts  try  the  Negro  fairly. 
I  have  observed  that  juries  have  not  hesitated  to  acquit  the  Negro 
when  the  evidence  showed  his  innocence.  Yet  honesty  demands 
that  I  say  that  justice  too  often  miscarries  in  the  attempt  to  en 
force  the  criminal  law  against  the  native  white  man.  It  is  not 
that  the  Negro  fails  to  get  justice  before  the  courts  in  the  trial 
of  the  specific  indictment  against  him,  but  too  often  it  is  that 
the  native  white  man  escapes  it.  It  must  be  poor  consolation  to 
the  foreign-born,  the  Negro  and  the  ignorant  generally  to  learn 
that  the  law  has  punished  only  the  guilty  of  their  class  or  race, 
and  to  see  that  the  guilty  of  the  class,  fortunate  by  reason  of 
wealth,  learning  or  color,  are  not  so  punished  for  like  crime. 


122  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP   PAPERS 

There  must  be  a  full  realization  of  the  fact  that  if  punishments 
of  the  law  are  not  imposed  on  all  offenders  alike,  it  will  breed  dis 
trust  of  administration." 

And  the  problem  reduces  itself  to  this :  with  the  present 
scheme  of  judicial  administration  how  can  the  better  class  be 
made  amenable  to  the  law  and  the  punishments  which  the  law 
decrees  for  its  infraction?  This  problem  is  not  peculiar  to  the 
South.  It  is  world-old.  Probably  it  is  part  of  the  wages  of  our 
sin,  part  of  the  penalty  which  we  must  pay  for  neglecting  to  per 
fect  our  system  for  the  administration  of  an  even-handed  justice. 

CONCLUSION. 

Some  students  have  begun  their  study  of  the  Negro  Question 
in  the  fullest  spirit  of  optimism.  They  have  approached  every 
phase  of  it  with  high  hopes  of  discovering  some  ready-made  so 
lution  to  this  problem  of  American  civilization.  But  all  too  soon 
they  reach  sometimes  the  point  of  disillusionment.  When  they  look 
back  over  the  results  of  their  investigations  and  take  up  the  task 
of  summarizing  their  conclusions,  their  optimism  falls  from  them 
like  some  ill-fitting  garment.  The  hard  facts  of  the  problem 
dominate  and  when  they  sit  down  to  the  peaceful  work  of  com 
mitting  their  thoughts  to  print,  the  note  of  pessimism  enters  in 
and  they  become  oppressed  by  the  apparent  hopelessness  of  the 
whole  question. 

Truly  enough  a  careful  study  of  the  race  question  will  yield 
much  that  may  daunt  the  spirits  of  the  most  ardent  friend  of 
the  A  fro- American.  The  tangled  features  of  the  problem  are 
eternally  presenting  themselves  to  depress  and  to  bewilder  the 
optimistic  student.  They  cannot  be  escaped  for  they  are  im 
bedded  in  the  very  nature  of  the  relationship  between  the  ad 
vanced  and  backward  race. 

William  Garrott  Brown  writing  on  "The  Lower  South  in 
American  History/'  sounds  a  true  note.  It  may  appear  as  being 
discouraging  but  it  is  a  pessimism  which  is  based  upon  facts  and 
which  reaches  out  after  the  mental  attitude  which  in  time  will 
bring  a  reasoning  optimism : 

"We  must  take  up  every  new  plan  with  the  chastening  knowl 
edge  that  most  of  our  devices  have  failed,  that  nothing  which 


THE  NEGRO  IN  THE;  SOUTH  123 

can  be  quickly  accomplished  will  go  deeply  enough  to  last;  that 
no  sudden  illumination  will  ever  come,  nor  any  swift  breaking 
of  the  clouds  shed  sunlight  on  our  shadowed  land.  Africa  still 
mocks  America  from  her  jungles.  'Still,'  she  jeers,  'with  the 
dense  darkness  of  my  ignorance,  I  confound  your  enlightenment. 
Still,  with  my  sloth,  I  weigh  down  the  arms  of  your  industry. 
Still,  with  my  supineness,  I  hang  upon  the  wings  of  your  aspira 
tion.  And  in  the  very  heart  of  your  imperial  republic  I  have 
planted,  sure  and  deep,  the  misery  of  this  ancient  curse  I  bear."  12 

This  temptation  to  pessimism  is  especially  strong  to  the  student 
of  negro  criminality  who  in  the  nature  of  things  is  dealing  with 
the  most  revolting  features  of  the  question.  He  sees  the  depths 
of  depravity  to  which  the  Afro-American  sometimes  sinks.  He 
is  concerned  with  the  conditions  which  after  all  furnish  the  most 
concrete  evidence  of  the  failure  of  the  negro  to  measure  up  to 
the  demands  of  an  ordered  civilization.  It  is  the  negro  of  the 
docks,  of  the  prison  house,  of  the  electric  chair  whom  he  studies. 
He  seldom  looks  beyond  these  associations  to  the  peaceful,  thrifty 
ways  of  the  better  class  of  negroes. 

But  even  the  student  of  negro  criminality  sees  the  light  of  a 
better  day.  As  he  considers  the  unfortunate  conditions  under 
which  the  negro  began  his  life  as  a  free  citizen,  as  he  traces  the 
increase  of  criminality  from  the  days  of  Reconstruction  to  the 
high  water  mark  in  the  nineties,  as  he  studies  the  gradual  de 
crease  which  has  set  in  within  the  last  twenty  years,  he  must  be 
optimistic  in  his  outlook.  He  cannot  escape  the  conviction  that 
with  the  improvement  of  conditions  which  environ  the  black  man 
the  criminal  negro  as  a  distinct  complication  of  the  negro  ques 
tion  will  disappear.  Of  course,  no  one  can  conscientiously  be 
lieve  that  the  negro  will  ever  reach  the  point  where  he  will  be 
equally  as  susceptible  to  the  restraints  of  the  law  as  the  white 
man.  Such  a  millenium  will  come  only  when  the  negro  estab 
lishes  himself  as  the  equal  of  the  white  man  in  basic  education 
and  character.  The  white  man  has  imbedded  in  his  nature  the 
Anglo-Saxon  passion  for  justice  and  for  the  majesty  of  the  law; 
this  passion  can  never  be  the  negro's  in  an  equal  measure. 


12.  William   Garrott   Brown,   The   Lower    South    in   American    His 
tory,  271. 


124  PHELPS-STOKES   FKLLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

Attention  has  already  been  directed  to  the  fact  that  the  prob 
lem  of  negro  criminality  is  relative.  It  grows  out  of  the  differ 
ences  in  the  comparative  criminality  of  the  two  races.  The  ideal 
is  to  reduce  these  differences  to  a  minimum.  That  the  negro  is 
becoming  more  law-abiding,  that  he  is  developing  a  firmer  re 
spect  for  the  mandates  of  organized  society  is  a  fact  that  has 
been  established  by  statistics  and  by  authoritative  investigations. 

But  the  ideal  has  not  been  realized  and  it  is  safe  to  assert  that 
it  will  not  be  realized  in  the  immediate  future.  Yet  it  is  gratifying 
to  know  that  the  students  of  the  negro  question  have  awakened 
to  the  importance  of  this  particular  phase.  In  the  past,  serious 
mistakes  have  been  made.  These  errors  have  been  errors  of 
omission,  rather  than  commission.  The  criminal  negro  as  a  sub 
ject  alike  of  denunciation  and  unreasoning  defense  has  not  been 
neglected  but  the  criminal  negro  as  the  subject  of  honest  study 
and  charitable  purposes  has  been  seriously  neglected. 

The  real  hope  for  the  establishment  of  harmonious  race  rela 
tionships  in  the  South  is  to  be  found  in  the  temper  of  the  leader 
ship  which  concerns  itself  with  the  problem.  This  leadership 
with  respect  to  the  criminal  negro  has  not  always  been  wise  and 
sincere.  All  the  parties  involved  have  committed  very  serious 
blunders.  It  is  high  time  that  these  errors  be  candidly  recog 
nized  and  that  the  program  of  the  future  represent  the  best 
thought  and  the  purest  purposes  of  all  who  are  in  any  way  as 
sociated  with  the  moulding  of  public  opinion  with  regard  to  negro 
criminality. 

A  senator  from  a  Southern  commonwealth  has  used  on  the 
floor  of  the  United  States  Senate  and  on  the  lecture  platform 
these  expressions:  "Yes,  we  have  stuffed  ballot-boxes,  and  will 
stuff  them  again ;  we  have  cheated  niggers  in  elections,  and  will 
cheat  them  again ;  we  have  disfranchised  niggers,  and  will  dis 
franchise  all  we  want  to;  we  have  killed  and  lynched  niggers 
and  will  kill  and  lynch  others;  we  have  burned  niggers  at  the 
stake  and  will  burn  others;  a  nigger  has  no  right  to  live  any 
how,  unless  a  white  man  wants  him  to  live.  If  you  don't  like 
it,  you  can  lump  it." 

The  governor  of  South  Carolina  in  1914  in  giving  his  reasons 
for  commuting  the  sentence  of  a  negro  murderer  from  death  to 


THE   NEGRO  IN   THE}   SOUTH  125 

life  imprisonment  declared :  "This  defendant  was  convicted  of 
killing  another  negro.  I  am  naturally  against  electrocuting  or 
hanging  one  negro  for  killing  another,  because  if  a  man  had  two 
fine  mules  running  loose  in  a  lot  and  one  went  mad  and  kicked 
and  killed  the  other  he  certainly  would  not  take  his  gun  and 
shoot  the  other  mule,  but  would  take  that  mule  and  work  it; 
therefore,  I  believe  that  when  one  negro  kills  another  he  should 
be  put  in  the  penitentiary  and  made  to  work  for  the  state." 

These  sentiments  do  not  represent  the  real  opinion  of  the 
thoughtful  Southern  people.  Few  Southerners  agree  with  the 
author  of  "The  Storm  Signal"  in  his  contention  that  the  negro 
is  "the  mudsill  of  the  social  and  industrial  South  today."  The 
danger  is  to  be  found  in  a  condition  of  things  which  would  en 
able  men  of  this  ilk  to  secure  the  reins  of  government  and  to 
change  the  laws  of  the  state  to  conform  to  these  brutal  senti 
ments. 

As  a  counter-blast  to  these  radical  opinions  which  have  been 
trumpeted  as  the  public  opinion  of  the  South,  there  have  come 
out  of  the  North  mistaken  statements  which  argue  that  the  negro 
is  being  oppressed,  that  the  full  justice  of  the  courts  of  law  is 
denied  him  and  that  he  is  the  object  of  cruel  and  un-American 
discriminations.  The  criminal  negro  has  been  invested  some 
times  with  a  sentimental  interest.  The  crime  which  he  has  com 
mitted  and  the  society  whose  laws  he  has  broken  are  ignored. 
His  innocence  is  presumed  and  the  wayward  sympathy  of  a  de 
luded,  even  if  sincere,  person  are  given  him.  Such  a  mistaken 
view  is  slightly  less  fatal  than  the  fire-eating  utterances  of  cer 
tain  southern  demagogues.  When  a  negro  violates  a  statute, 
he  would  be  punished  according  to  the  provisions  of  the  law ; 
to  tell  him  that  he  is  a  persecuted  creature  serves  no  other  pur 
pose  than  to  confirm  him  in  his  criminal  instincts  and  to  offer 
an  incentive  to  others  of  his  race  who  may  be  tempted  to  commit 
the  same  crime. 

The  negro  leaders  have  not  always  dealt  fairly  with  the  crim 
inal  element  of  their  race.  Instead  of  upholding  the  law  in  its 
effort  to  protect  life  and  property,  they  have  often  sided  with 
the  criminal  and  been  guilty  of  inflammatory  statements.  They 
have  looked  at  the  law  as  being  the  "white  man's  law"  rather 


126  PHELPS-STOKES   FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

than  as  a  protective  agency  to  be  invoked  impartially  in  behalf 
of  both  races.  Ray  Stannard  Baker  in  his  "Following  the  Color 
Line"  refers  to  the  clannish  instinct  which  has  been  developed 
among  the  Afro-Americans  and  which  evidences  itself  "in  the 
way  in  which  the  mass  of  negroes  refuse  to  turn  over  a  crim 
inal  of  their  own  color  to  white  justice." 

The  progress  of  the  negro  race  in  America  has  suffered  from 
the  prejudices  which  have  blurred  the  vision  of  those  who  have 
assumed  leadership.  The  negroes  have  been  faced  with  the  re 
sponsibility  of  choosing  between  two  schools  of  leadership  within 
their,  own  race.  One  school  teaches  the  ideal  of  industrial  train 
ing  and  enjoins  the  black  man  to  worry  less  about  his  rights  and 
more  about  his  opportunities.  The  other  is  the  school  of  dis 
content,  of  militant  unrest.  The  ablest  expounder  of  this  view 
point  is  Dr.  W.  E.  B.  DuBois  who  has  continually  sounded  the 
note  of  oppression  and  has  called  upon  the  negro  to  arise  and 
assert  his  rights.  The  mass  of  the  race  has  been  divided  in  its 
loyalties,  some  ranging  under  the  standard  of  Booker  Washing 
ton  while  others  have  embraced  the  opinions  of  DuBois.  The 
teachings  of  the  discontented  leaders  have  been  unfortunately 
directed  and  have  tended  to  inflame  racial  passions.  They  have 
certainly  contributed  nothing  truly  serviceable  in  abating  negro 
criminality.  Their  contentions  are  well  expressed  by  DuBois  in 
the  following  paragraph : 

"The  dangerously  clear  logic  of  the  negro's  position  will  more 
and  more  loudly  assert  itself  in  that  day  when  increasing  wealth 
and  more  intricate  social  organization  preclude  the  South  from 
being,  as  it  so  largely  is,  simply  an  armed  camp  for  intimidating 
the  black  folk.  Such  waste  of  energy  cannot  be  spared  if  the 
South  is  to  catch  up  with  civilization.  And  as  the  black  third  of 
the  land  grows  in  thrift  and  skill,  unless  guided  in  its  larger 
philosophy,  must  more  and  more  brood  over  the  red  past  and 
the  creeping,  crooked  present,  until  it  grasps  a  gospel  of  revolt 
and  revenge  and  throws  its  new-found  energies  athwart  the  cur 
rent  of  advance.  Even  today  the  masses  of  the  Negroes  see  all 
too  clearly  the  anomalies  of  their  position  and  the  moral  crooked 
ness  of  yours.  You  may  marshal  strong  indictments  against 
them,  but  their  counter  cries,  lacking  though  they  be  in  formal 


THE   N£GRO  IN   TH£   SOUTH  127 

logic,  have  burning  truths  within  them  which  you  may  not  wholly 
ignore.  O  Southern  Gentlemen !  If  you  deplore  their  presence 
here,  they  ask,  Who  brought  us?  When  you  cry,  Deliver  us 
from  the  vision  of  intermarriage,  they  answer  that  legal  marriage 
is  infinitely  better  than  systematic  concubinage  and  prostitution. 
And  if  in  just  fury  you  accuse  their  vagabonds  of  violating 
women,  they  also  in  fury  quite  as  just  may  reply:  The  rape 
which  your  gentlemen  have  done  against  helpless  black  women 
in  defiance  of  your  own  laws  is  written  on  the  foreheads  of  two 
millions  of  mulattoes  and  written  in  ineffaceable  blood.  And 
finally  when  you  fasten  crime  upon  this  race  as  its  peculiar  trait, 
they  answer  that  slavery  was  the  arch-crime  and  lynching  and 
lawlessness  its  twin  abortion;  that  color  and  race  are  not  crime, 
and  yet  they  it  is  which  in  this  land  receives  most  unceasing  con 
demnation,  North,  East,  South  and  West."  13 

Raymond  Patterson  in  the  preface  to  "The  Negro  and  His 
Needs"  wrote:  "The  Southern  man  is  too  close  to  the  negro 
and  the  Northern  man  too  far  away.  Somewhere  between  these 
two  widely  different  points  of  view  must  be  found  the  solution 
of  the  negro  problem."  But  why  cannot  the  thoughtful  leaders 
of  the  North  and  South  and  of  the  negro  race  pool  their  en 
thusiasm  and  high  resolves  and  unite  their  strength  in  the  at 
tempt  to  bring  peace  and  order  out  of  the  snarl?  They  are  all 
striving  for  the  same  ends  if  they  would  silence  the  radical  and 
deluded  members  and  present  their  sane,  honest  considerations. 
The  South — the  silent,  thoughtful  South — must  realize  how  in 
separably  her  interests  are  bound  up  with  the  welfare  of  the 
negro.  It  is  no  gain  to  her  that  the  negro  fills  her  penitentiaries 
and  stocks  her  court  dockets,  for  crime  in  its  very  essence  is  a 
loss.  She  does  not  profit  by  ill-considered  hatred  and  unnatural 
prejudices.  The  Northern  friend  of  the  Afro-American  must 
realize  that  his  sympathy  is  wrongly  placed  and  his  efforts  at 
reform  are  futile  as  long  as  the  negro  continues  to  commit  crimes 
to  an  abnormal  degree.  All  his  philanthropy  will  avail  nothing 
when  the  negro  persists  in  the  habits  of  law-breaking.  The  hon 
est,  statesmanlike  leaders  of  the  negro  race  must  realize  that  the 


13.  DuBois,  The  Souls  of  Black  Folk,  105-6. 


128  PHELPS-STOKES    FELLOWSHIP    PAPERS 

negro  can  only  progress  by  cultivating  a  respect  for  laws  and  by 
abiding  by  the  statutes  of  organized  society.  To  ignore  the 
crime  and  to  center  attention  on  the  penalty  is  to  throw  about  the 
criminal  a  sentimental  interest  which  never  operates  as  a  deter 
rent  or  counteracts  the  lawless  tendencies  of  the  race. 

Negro  crime  will  never  be  reduced  to  the  minimum  as  long 
as  the  leaders  stand  apart  and  nurse  the  prejudices  which  they 
have  inherited  from  the  past.  They  can  better  conditions  only 
when  they  analyze  the  causes  and  approach  the  question  in  a 
dispassionate  manner  with  the  determination  to  achieve  results. 

If  there  are  laws  in  the  South  which  work  an  injustice  to  the 
negro  race,  then  abolish  these  laws.  Some  courts  in  the  South 
may  be  denying  the  negro  offender  a  fair  hearing  with  all  the 
facts  entered.  Then  strike  at  this  evil  in  all  strength  of  will  and 
sincerity  of  resolve.  Try  the  accused  according  to  the  best  ideals 
of  justice  and  once  convicted  punish  him  according  to  the  pre 
scribed  penalties  of  the  law.  Let  the  negro  leaders  raise  up 
their  voices  in  earnest  warning  to  their  race  to  revere  and  obey 
the  laws  of  the  several  states.  Let  the  negroes  discontinue  all 
habits  that  they  may  have  of  harboring  or  sympathizing  with 
the  criminals  of  their  race.  Let  the  Northern  friends  of  the 
Afro-American  unite  with  the  white  and  negro  leaders  at  the 
South  in  carrying  out  this  program. 

He  is  irrevocably  committed  to  optimism  who  can  foresee  the 
coming  of  the  time  when  the  negro  will  be  as  law-abiding  as  his 
white  neighbor.  But  that  excessive  criminality  is  due  in  a  meas 
ure  to  conditions  which  can  be  remedied  should  give  hope  to 
those  who  are  truly  interested  in  the  progress  of  the  black  man. 
Patience  and  slow  time,  sympathy  and  judgment — these  must  be 
trusted  to  attain  the  results  that  will  come  under  the  regime  of 
broad-gauged,  whole-souled  leadership. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


— r 


res  - 


C.  CIR.    AU6    975 


RETC'D  LID 


jUL  9  -  1966  7 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


